Language Design, with special guests Lawrence Schoen and David J. Peterson: a Google+ hangout report

The Language Design hangout finally happened, and it was a resounding success! We had fabulous guests with us, namely Lawrence Schoen and David J. Peterson, and great participants including Barbara Webb, Leigh Bardugo, Leigh Dragoon, and Megan Hutchins.

We started out with introductions, talking about what brought us to the evening's discussion.

Lawrence Schoen is the founder and director of the Klingon Language Institute. He has a Ph.D. in Psycholinguistics and also a man with a great sense of humor; he says he is where he is today because he "fell in with a bad crowd," and that soon he'll be teaching Klingon to people in Atlanta. He had us laughing quite a bit during the session.

David Peterson is the president of the Language Creation Society, and has been creating languages since 2000. He's best known for his work creating the Dothraki language for HBO's Game of Thrones series, based on the works of George R.R. Martin.

At this point there was a digression about who would most likely win in a fight: a Dothraki or a Klingon. Opinion was somewhat mixed but the general consensus was that the Klingon would come out on top. We learned that Lawrence has a real mek'leth at his house. Trespassers beware!

Barbara Webb is a writer who loves second world fantasy and making up random words.
Leigh Bardugo is a writer whose Grisha trilogy is coming out in June this year. It's a fantasy based on 1800's Tsarist Russia, using a Russian-inspired fantasy language that she designed with David Peterson's help.
Leigh Dragoon is a writer who is looking to add structure to the words she's already been using in her work.
Megan Hutchins started conlanging as a teen and gravitated to linguistics in college; she enjoys Mayan glyphs and language invention. Both she and David knew Dirk Elzinga, a linguist at BYU.

From there we started with basics of language construction. Lawrence stated quite clearly that his favorite thing is to tie culture into language - it's something I love too! - but we moved quickly into the question of language sounds, which are often the first element people start working with. David recommends asking for the purposes of languages which will appear in written stories, "What sounds can I represent with the Roman alphabet?" Although, as Lawrence observed, there are typewriters and fonts for the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and SAMPA (Speech Assessment Method Phonetic Alphabet), these aren't going to be much use for typical story-writing. David mentioned that not too many people know that the Mexican "x" indicates a "sh" sound, and said one should stay away from it; he does think that George R.R. Martin did a good job rendering Dothraki using the Roman alphabet. My own sense is that so long as you're not wedded to readers pronouncing your words accurately (a big if!), you can develop Roman-alphabet shorthand for some of the sounds you're creating and leave it at that.

Barbara mentioned how critical it is to figure out names early on; names are often the first (and sometimes also the last!) place where unequivocal evidence is available for an underlying language system. Lawrence urged everyone to make sure that whatever names you use in your work, they fit into the system of the underlying created language. I mentioned my own experience in my early years working with Varin, which was that I'd created all kinds of names and some years in realized that I wanted to have them to conform to underlying language systems, so I had to sort them into piles by what kind of system they seemed to match with, delete some, change others, and figure there were three different languages underlying the use of names. As David aptly remarked, the earlier you start with the idea that you want a language system to underlie your story, the less work you will have to do later on back-forming it.

Lawrence mentioned a character of his who had been cursed with the inability to use voiceless consonants (these include t/p/k/s etc.). Instead of having him mispronounce words, he had the character very carefully select the words he used so that he never had to use the sounds he couldn't pronounce, which apparently made his language use rather unusual! He recommended to us China Miéville's book Embassytown, which he said (and I have also heard) is wonderful for language geeks.

David explained three ways he's encountered to incorporate a created language into a story (and did so heroically, in spite of technical difficulties!). The first way is that used by George R.R. Martin in A Song of Ice and Fire. He uses the Dothraki words in his text and then follows them up with an immediate English translation in the same line, written in italics. Lawrence mentioned that this is actually a real-life approach to foreign language translation, where an Anglo-Saxon word in English would be immediately followed by the word with the same meaning in French. The example everyone has heard of is "Will and Testament." We briefly mentioned how Tolkien sets his elvish language poems and songs apart from the main text; this can work well because non-linguists and those not interested in the language itself can skip those sections. Mind you, as David noted, that means it's important not to put critical plot information in those sections!

The second way was the approach taken by the folks subtitling the Japanese TV series One Piece. With certain Japanese words - the example mentioned here was "nakama" - the English translation is not entirely accurate, so after translating it for a while, the group basically said, "okay, we're not going to translate it any more" and that way they could allow the watchers to learn a more Japanese-like interpretation of the word from the contexts where it appeared. Letting readers deduce the meaning of an unfamiliar alien (or foreign language) word from context is a very useful approach. David also mentioned the word Khal from Dothraki, whose interpretation is not entirely translatable (he's the head of a Khalasa, don't ya know...). Lawrence suggests (mischievously) that you teach just a few words for beginners, but give poetry and word games to those deeper in.

The third way David mentioned was one the used by Juliette Wade (cue sound of my jaw dropping) from my story Cold Words, where the language Aurrel was used as a translation template to alter English - another way of saying this is that the English I used was a relatively literal translation from Aurrel. David compared this to taking the phrase "Me encantan los tacos" in Spanish, and instead of translating it to the English "I love tacos," reflecting the literal Spanish meaning by translating it as "Tacos enchant me." One of the special things that my character Rulii did linguistically was that he never used the present progressive tense - which dramatically changed the flavor of his narrative.

I mentioned that my favorite elements of alien language, the ones I most enjoy incorporating into my stories, are cultural concepts and pragmatics. These are much less commonly used by language creators whose work I've encountered in the past, but Lawrence and David are both into them. Lawrence in particular says he'd love to see aliens who make speech errors or who don't speak properly, aliens with different speech styles, etc. For those of you less familiar with what pragmatics is, it's basically how you get things across that aren't restricted to the literal meaning of the words you're using - this includes manners and social posturing, speech acts like requests and refusals etc., implied meaning, and things of that nature. As an example of cultural concepts I explained how in Cold Words, I took the concept of "friend" and made it feel foreign to readers by showing how Rulii struggled with it - a "friend" is not "skin-close, as a littermate or consort," but closer than "huntmate" because somehow (and he can't figure out how) it's supposed to be independent of Rank. One can do a similiar thing, backwards, to teach alien words and cultural concepts to readers.

David mentioned a special technique he uses to enhance the realism of his created languages, that is, to invent them and then to "age" them by about 100 years. The language you've created gains a much more authentic feel if it has been subjected to the forces of language change. Lawrence notes that too few authors consider language change when dealing with time travel. He suggests that we have people time travel in Iceland more often because the language has barely changed since its ancient roots. This made me think of Stargate (the movie) in which the linguist had knowledge of a language that was an ancestor of the language spoken by the aliens he met, and therefore had to try to "update" his knowledge to learn the new language. I also have a similar book idea where a Tolkien-like student of ancient languages and religions accidentally discovers the descendants of the ancient people whose archaeology he's exploring.

Leigh Bardugo also gave us a glimpse of the language she's using in her forthcoming book; both the fantasy setting and the language are Russian-inspired. She notes that in YA you have to be very careful with fantasy language, because though Game of Thrones may have changed some things, people reading YA aren't generally prepared for the high fantasy approach to language. Each word has to have resonance even if you are skimming. She used her first person narrator to help scaffold the language, allowing what didn't make sense to the narrator to be opaque to the reader as well. She used little tricks like using cognates with Russian.

Watch out when you're writing stories. A linguist will tend to know too much about the language, and want to push it too far. A writer (i.e. someone who is primarily a writer) will tend to embed it more subtly into the story.

David pointed out that he liked Leigh Bardugo's language because, since it used Slavic, it had a real sound-feeling. If you use a particular Earthly language as your basis for naming, then it will often sound more authentic and integrated. Leigh was looking for a non-medieval setting around the 1800's which would feel textured and present yet exotic. Russian, including slang, worked well for this. Janice Hardy did a similar thing by using Afrikaans as a linguistic source when she was writing The Healing Wars series. Avatar: the Last Airbender (the TV show) also did a wonderful job with this kind of linguistic and cultural incorporation. Lawrence mentioned Shogun as a very successful instance of language use, because you get to learn Japanese along with the character.

This was a fantastic and inspirational discussion for me, and I hope we can have another one of these in the future. If you missed it and would like to attend a future session, please do contact me so I can put you on my Google+ language hangout circle and make sure you are informed about any future dates. Participants: please let me know if I have made any errors in my report (based on your recollections) and if you would like to have me provide a link to a web page for you, please do give me the URL and I'll add it.

Thanks so much to everyone!

Link: Great article about click languages with real video

I loved this article today. Not only does it talk about click languages and give you real examples, but it talks about how English speakers also use clicks - not as phonemes, but as discourse organizers. Check it out!

TTYU Retro: What does choice of point of view (POV) mean? How does it challenge a writer?

I can't tell you how many lengthy discussions I've witnessed, and participated in, on the topic of point of view. With every visit to Absolute Write (a terrific site for writers, so check it out if you haven't) I'm almost guaranteed to find a discussion of point of view going on in one form or another... so I thought it was about time I revisited the topic.

Most people come to the topic of point of view through the basic categorization scheme of first person - second person - third person. It's not too hard to learn that first person means "I," second means "you," and third means "he" or "she." Where things get tangled up is in the further categories that get imposed, particularly on third person. So for today's post, I'm going to start by talking about some general characteristics of point of view, and then make a checklist to talk about what effects each basic pronoun permutation has, and what challenges it presents to the writer.

The most basic thing that point of view does is allow you, as a writer, to control information. In any given social situation there is so much available sensory information that you can't possibly capture it all. This was brought home to me in quite dramatic fashion by one of my professors in grad school. He asked the people in the class to write down everything he did from the point when he said "go" to the point when he said "stop." Then he went outside the door, said "go," walked in and up to his desk carrying a book, set down the book, looked up and smiled, and said "stop." After doing that, he had each person read the description he or she had written. Every single one of twenty descriptions was different from every other.

As a writer, you're in charge of what information makes it into your story. What gets in there should be whatever information is most important for the reader to understand - this is true whatever pronoun you choose to use. The different pronouns, however, create different effects - especially when used in conjunction with different verb tenses. I'll try to lay out some of the differences, and the complications that come with them, below.


1a. First person present tense (sometimes, "first person concurrent")

• How we identify it: "I" is in the subject position when the narrator acts; main action verbs are in present tense, "am," "go," "walk," etc. though there will also be progressives ("am doing") and modals ("should be").
• The narrator is the character reporting while in the process of experiencing the story. That means that his/her knowledge is restricted. Unless he/she has experienced something, or been told something, he/she cannot know it. He/she cannot know anything about what will happen before it happens. However, he/she is free to speculate, and to judge, and to regret, etc.
• The narrative feels very myopic and immediate. Often readers will feel an extreme sense of intensity. This makes it a good choice when you want people to identify with the visceral experiences and emotions of your narrator. The narrative also carries the individual voice of the character.
• The writer has at least three challenges here. First is to make sure to keep all information restricted to the character's own perceptions, judgments and actions without letting author knowledge creep in. Second is to make sure to include enough information and orientation that readers don't become disoriented. Third is to make sure to exclude filter words that distance readers from the narrative, and to include enough of others' behavior, and of judgment-laced description, that the narrative doesn't fall into a constant repetitive pattern of sentences starting with "I."

Example from "Cold Words" (Analog Oct 2009):
I scent human outside the door: our linguist, Parker. He never comes to the Ice Home while I attend Cold Council - he must bring important news! I bow to haunches, then excuse myself from Majesty's presence, quickly as I can without inviting snarls from the others.


1b. First person past tense/retrospective

• How we identify it: "I" is in the subject position; main action verbs are in past tense, "was," "went," "walked," etc. though there will also be progressives ("was doing") and modals ("should have been"). Certain verbs may appear in present tense because of ongoing states.
• The narrator is the character reporting the story after it has happened. Some authors put the narrator in a sort of nebulous, unidentifiable later time, but I think it's particularly interesting when the later context is more specific. The character may be an old woman talking about her youth, or someone who has just survived the climactic battle reporting on events of the last six months, or possibly someone in the afterlife reporting on the cause of his/her death (so this choice doesn't necessarily make readers doubt the peril the narrator is in).
• The narrative feels less directly immediate than present tense narration. It may be infused with a distinct sense of storyteller voice, particularly if the narrator's context means he/she is reporting as a storyteller after the fact.
• The writer's challenges are similar to those of the present tense narrative, in that information must be systematically restricted to the perceptions, emotions and judgments of the main character. It is somewhat easier to keep readers oriented because of the "storyteller" factor. The narrator may also (though not necessarily) make reference to events in the future of his/her past self, because they are in the past relative to the place where he/she is currently sitting while telling the story. It's also good to avoid filter words and overuse of the simple first person subject "I" to begin sentences.

Example from Blue Fire by Janice Hardy:
I watered the lake violets in the front sunroom. Just busy work, but I had to do something other than sit in the town house worrying while my friends were out risking their lives. I should have been out there with them, but I'd been recognized on our last rescue mission, and it wasn't safe outside for me anymore. Not that Geveg had been all that save in the five years since the Baseeri invaded; but being hunted by the Duke, his soldiers, Geveg's Governor-General, and who knew how many trackers added a whole new level of danger.

1c. First person mixed present/past tense
I included this one because it's more unusual, but makes perfect sense if, for example, you have a narrator who is sitting and writing a diary entry, commenting on both things that have happened in his/her past, and things that are going on while he/she is writing.

Example from Through This Gate (Dana writing in her journal about trying to figure out her new roommate Shannon):
Maybe mom was hinting that Shannon has some kind of granola-head thing going and I shouldn't let myself be influenced, but I'm not sure that fits with the makeup, or the computer either. Anyway, when the last box was in, Mom looked around my empty half of the room as if she didn't notice the bare blue mattress or the battered furniture. "This is great," she said, gesturing - I swear, the woman could conduct orchestras.


2a. Second person

• How we identify it: "You" is in the subject position when the narrator acts.
• The narrator is placed in a position which is the same as that of the reader. An assumption is made that the reader will accept an alternate assignment of identity. However, the protagonist is not actually usually the reader, but a character in the story as one would expect with other pronouns.
• The narrative feels demanding and provocative. There may be a sensation that the actual protagonist is standing behind the reader, acting, but mostly invisible.
• The writer's challenge grows directly out of the problem of narrator=reader. In order to enjoy the story, the reader must accept that they are conditionally being placed in the position of both character and reader. Not all readers are willing to do this. The actual identity of the narrator will grow out of that narrator's judgments and actions. Because of the sensation that the character is standing invisibly behind the reader, the identity of the narrator becomes a major factor in driving the story. Story entry is of special importance, because often the reader will have an easier time accepting this unusual subject position if the writer eases them into it slowly, rather than saying something extreme like, say, "You're a cyborg and you want to take over the world!" It's also important to keep the focus of the point of view restricted to the perceptions and reactions of a single character. If it's hard for a reader to accept being one other person, adding extra information will only make it harder.

Example from If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino:
You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want you to watch TV!" Raise your voice - they won't hear you otherwise - "I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything; just hope they'll leave you alone.


3a. Third person limited (also, "close third person")

• How we identify it: "He" or "She" is in the subject position when the narrator acts.
• The narrator is a character in the story. The information in the narrative must be restricted to what that single character knows, perceives, experiences, or judges, just as if it were written in first person.
• The narrative feels idiosyncratic, carrying the character's voice. This voice may differ depending on the placement of the narrator either in the action (present tense) or after the action (past tense), but it reflects the character's identity.
• The writer's challenge is to manage the story while maintaining the limits on the information a character can experience. Since both the protagonist and other characters will be marked with "he" and "she" pronouns, it can sometimes be harder to keep this discipline. Some authors using close third person point of view choose to change from one character to another over the course of the story in order to drive the story from different directions, so that no single character has all the information that the reader does. The challenges in this case become keeping the narrative voices distinct when using different characters to carry the narrative, and making sure readers don't get confused when point of view switches occur. A common means to reduce confusion is to mark point of view changes with chapter or scene breaks.

Examples from "The Eminence's Match" (Eight Against Reality, 2010)
POV 1
Shadowless in the light of two hundred and twelve electric bulbs on his vaulted stone ceiling, the Eminence Nekantor frowned down over his naked ribs. Look: two gold buttons at the waist of his silk trousers. Fastened, both of them, completely fastened. Deceptively fastened. They had been fastened wrong: lower-then-upper, not upper-then-lower. The difference stuck to the buttons like fingerprints. The difference felt like fingers pressing on his mind.
POV 2
Xinta bent into a half-bow, watching a gang of six noble boys surround him. They had a new leader today: Grobal Rennerik, with reddened knuckles on his right fist that matched a mark beside the former leader's left eye. The followers' gazes flickered hungrily between them. Clearly this encounter was to become Rennerik's demonstration that his leadership was deserved. That would mean a difficult task - but if he could carry it out, he could prove his worth in love and loyalty to all of them at once.

3b. Third person omniscient

• How we identify it: "He" or "she" is in the subject position when any character acts.
• The narrator is not a character in the story. This makes third person omniscient different from any of the other points of view mentioned above. It means the narrator is free of any restriction of person, time, or place that the story itself may impose on characters.
• The narrative feels distinctly as if it is being related by a storyteller. Sometimes the voice of the narrator is distinctive (grandfatherly, or like an epic poet, etc.), and sometimes it is more invisible, but it does not match that of any character in the story. Readers don't share the myopia of any single character, though the narrator may show it to them.
• The writer's challenge is to decide how to restrict the information included in the story. The narrator knows all - everything about the setting, about the characters' motives, perceptions, judgments, emotions and actions - but cannot tell all, for the reasons I mentioned above. Generally the narration will stick relatively close to the main character, because the goals of that person, and the stakes that person faces, are what keep the main conflict of the story driving forward. However, some narrators will create tension and drive by showing how different characters misunderstand one another. Because the narrator is not a character and has his/her own distinct voice, authors are free to show different characters' viewpoints in relatively close succession. The challenge becomes keeping the sense that the narrator is located in a place outside the story, distinct from the viewpoint of any character, so readers don't get confused when they are told what one character experiences so closely after hearing about another.

Example from A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
"Here we are, Sara," said Captain Crewe, making his voice sound as cheerful as possible. Then he lifted her out of the cab and they mounted the steps and rang the bell. Sara often thought afterward that the house was somehow exactly like Miss Minchin. It was respectable and well furnished, but everything in it was ugly; and the very armchairs seemed to have hard bones in them.


You may notice at this point that I have not discussed some other variants of third person, like third person limited, or third person distant. These are questions of narrative distance, which I don't have time to discuss in this post. I'll try to take them up in the near future. For now, though, I encourage you to pop over to Janice Hardy's The Other Side of the Story, where she has gone further with questions of omniscient point of view.

Can you "know" a character if you're not in his/her head?

Quick answer: yes, you can.

Most often, though, I see this question in internet writing discussions, and it's not framed as a question. I see people saying, "I think I need this point of view in my story so people will be able to know the character better."

No, you don't necessarily.

I like to think of it this way: we don't "get into the heads" of people we know in real life, yet we do feel we know them. The way we get to know them is by observing their actions, listening to their words, and drawing conclusions about what they are thinking. Babies typically learn to construe others' emotions on the basis of facial expressions at age 9 months, and this changes everything about the way they interact with others. What I mean by this is that as humans we have a very strong basic instinct to read emotion from facial expressions - and this extends to construing motives etc. on the basis of others' behavior.

As authors, we can take advantage of this instinct. Non-POV characters, treated properly, will reveal their own thoughts and motives. The key, however, is that the author must know the auxiliary character's thoughts and motives. Thus in order to make it possible to write characters without having readers need to be in their heads, the author must be taking a look into their heads.

I can't tell you the number of times that I've written a scene and felt it wasn't really coming across quite right - but when I went back and looked over it, I discovered the problem was that I really didn't understand the emotional state and motives of an important secondary character. Sometimes a non-POV character can be so minor that his/her emotional states aren't particularly relevant (like a guard who takes no action, for example). However, I urge you not to underestimate how often people construe others' motives without even realizing they're doing it. It's always my habit to have point of view characters move through their world judging people and events, and thus I will occasionally find opportunities for characters to toss off a guess at what a minor standby character is thinking. By doing something like this, you can accomplish two things: first, you can say something about the main character's state of mind (like having him be self-conscious and wondering what others think of him), and second, you can imply that any character is potentially worthy of having his/her motives guessed at. This can encourage your readers to guess at the motives of minor characters more often, and give your entire world a greater sense of depth and dimension.

So when is it a good idea to make a character into a point-of-view character? I'd say that it's a good idea to use a character's point of view 1. when that character "owns" a vital piece of the main conflict and 2. when knowledge of that character's mental states enhances the main conflict rather than detracting from it. This previous post, Multiple POV or not?, considers some of the issues of including or excluding a character's point of view. Basic summary: just because a character has opinions, or even an important role, doesn't mean that you should include his/her point of view. My point here, however, is that it may be very important to understand what the character's point of view would be like.

What I suggest, in a case where you really want to know a secondary character deeply, is to write a piece from that person's point of view. This can be a part of the work-in-progress, but generally when I've done it I've done a completely separate piece, almost a short vignette story, having to do with some backstory event that helps form that character's personality and motives. I initially wrote my Panverse Eight Against Reality piece, "The Eminence's Match," as a piece of backstory for a major non-POV character in the trilogy I was writing at the time. I can't tell you how valuable that experience was for me, or how inspiring. I then was able to go further back in time, and get further insight, when I started writing my current novel. The more complex a character is, the more valuable it can be to know them deeply. That way their words and actions will make ten times better sense, and come across as real to readers, even when they are acting without the support of internal point of view.

It's something to think about.

Language Design hangout will go forward today at 5pm

Okay, so as I'd hoped I'm feeling quite a bit better today. Not that I'd planned to change this hangout, but at least I'm pretty sure I won't spend the whole hour sneezing (as I would have yesterday!).

Today at 5pm PST on Google+ David Peterson, Lawrence Schoen and I will be talking about conlanging, or designing languages. I'm really excited to have the chance to put our heads together for this one!

Late change: Pets hangout postponed

I apologize to those of you who were looking forward to today's discussion of pets, but I am hacking and sneezing and don't feel comfortable with video chat today. Tomorrow afternoon's discussion will still go on, no matter what... hopefully by then I'll see some improvement. My apologies to all!

The Culture of Oppression: A Google+ worldbuilding hangout report

I had a fantastic and very large group of people join me for my Culture of Oppression hangout on February 15th. My guests were Dale Emery, Liz Arroyo, Harry Markov, Jaleh Dragich, Janet Harriett, Barbara Webb, Glenda Pfeiffer, Bryan Thomas, and K. Richardson.

We started out by doing a bit of brainstorming on what came to mind when we thought of oppression. My list coming in to the hangout was: stereotypes, slurs, institutional bias, demographic pressure, "what is strength?", "to whom is oppression invisible", and "who buys in?" My guests mentioned bullying, isolated communities, minorities, ethnicity and sexuality.

Very often when we read science fiction and fantasy, we'll see a heavy emphasis on stereotyping and insults - the aspects of oppression which can easily be expressed out loud. However, in worldbuilding, it's very important to keep in mind that the invisible aspects of oppression are just as important, and your world won't work nearly as well if they are missing.

Jaleh mentioned that oppression leads to emotional scarring. In fact, oppressed peoples will often not only be insulted, but will come to believe in their own inferiority and join in oppressing one another. The animal people of Tamora Pierce's The Emperor Mage were mentioned in this context.

Institutional oppression happens when the structure of a system (institutional, bureaucratic) results in the oppression of a group. Religious oppression happens both across religions and within religions. We talked about the function of "gatekeepers" as a means to oppress within institutions. It's not fair to ask someone to "fill out this form" if he or she is unable to read. Liz mentioned language barriers - a really good point. In Australia* until the 1960's, immigrants could be asked to pass "a language test" in order to enter the country. Though one might assume that the test would be in English, tests would often be administered in Swahili or Tagalog to minorities that the authorities weren't keen to let in. This policy is referred to as the "White Australia Policy." This is just one small example of how, in oppressive situations, the rules will be applied inconsistently  based on what kind of person you are. Dale taught us "the unwritten law of unwritten law": written laws are just a façade for unwritten laws. Harry told us about how in Bulgaria you need to have the right connections to get appointments at universities, with doctors, or with lawyers. The people who know the right people or who have done the right kind of favors are able to bypass the gatekeepers, when to the general public it looks like everyone has to face the gatekeeper in order to proceed.
*[Note: during the verbal discussion I wrongly (if uncertainly) attributed this policy to the US - I apologize for the mistake. My Australian husband reminded me of the precise facts when I asked him.]

People who are "behind the law" are also vulnerable to predation. If the law says you are not allowed to access a particular person, and you access them anyway, then they are more easily able to take advantage of you because you cannot reveal that you saw them in the first place. The example I gave of this was of women who were swindled, fondled, raped or seriously injured by doctors (and men pretending to be doctors) when they sought abortions in the pre-Roe vs. Wade era.

When we write fiction, intentional oppression is a lot easier to portray than unintentional oppression. Similarly, it can be tricky to portray lack of opportunity realistically. Barbara brought up the fact that in fantasy, farmboys seem to have an uncanny ability to run off and have adventures unlimited by their poverty and lack of education, etc. Definitely keep an eye out for places in your work where people are able to access things in unrealistic ways.

As I have mentioned in a previous article, being oppressed does not mean that you are weak. People who are oppressed and have social walls erected around them will be aware of the power opportunities they do have, and use them to the greatest extent possible. A woman who is only allowed to choose her husband will choose very carefully. A woman whose virginity is considered a valuable bargaining chip may decide to take matters into her own hands in order to influence events (a friend and I both have situations like this in our current works-in-progress).

Oppressed people are not necessarily in control of the meaning of their own actions. Harry mentioned a story of a girl who was framed for killing a dragon, and how politicians used her as a symbol. Katniss of The Hunger Games is a terrific example of an oppressed person trying to use her actions to express meaning, but having those actions be twisted by multiple forces outside her control (the government of Panem, and the resistance).

Dale asked, "How do oppressors justify their oppression?" This will be different depending on whether it is intentional or unintentional oppression. With unintentional oppression, the oppressor is more likely to construe an oppressed person's lack of opportunity as a lack of drive or a lack of quality. With intentional oppression, very often that same "lack of quality" argument will be used to justify actively oppressive behaviors on the basis of "the greater good." Some people will become oppressors out of the fear that if they do not, they will become the oppressed. But who decides what is good for society? Who defines these group identities? You will tend to see a lot of common scripts for oppression, by which I mean ways in which a dominant group will simultaneously define and belittle another group. "They're not like us." "They're savages." Even characteristics in which the oppressed group takes pride (internally) can be turned into justification for ridicule. Bryan mentioned that people often feel threatened by strangeness in values and ways of understanding the world.

I took an example from my Varin world at this point and talked about how the Imbati servant caste is marked with tattoos on the forehead that are seen by nobles as a sign of servitude, by people of lower castes as signs of danger and their tendency to be gatekeepers/keep secrets, and by themselves as points of pride in the virtuous nature of their vocation to serve the nobles who desperately need their support. Imbati take pride in their own selflessness, and see themselves as fundamentally better off than the nobles because they are more virtuous, but also because they are healthier and take something of a parental role in their guardianship of an ostensibly higher caste. Barbara picked up on this and mentioned that sometimes there will be widespread denial that any problem of oppression exists. The oppressive condition is seen as normal. Dale insightfully remarked that we are very protective of how we identify ourselves. K mentioned that the cultural oppression of women involves convincing the women in question that they are being given privilege, being put on a pedestal. Janet picked up on the idea of the invisibility of oppression talking about her "slightly redneck" background (my favorite quote: "there's nothing duct tape won't fix!") when no one she knew considered their low socioeconomic status a problem of oppression. "You don't think, 'I'm oppressed,' you think, 'what's wrong with me?'" Jaleh related to this and talked about encountering a sort of vague distaste when she changed schools. Barbara said that oppression is easier to identify from the outside than it is from the inside.

Harry told us that in Bulgaria, people who have more will explain how they're better off, and people who do not share your religion will tell you how you should leave Bulgaria. Also, homosexuals won't get jobs unless they're able to act straight. K agreed that the question of whether you can "pass" is very important in how you will be treated by the oppressive group.

Bryan mentioned encountering the attitude that "God likes white people more" when he was in Ghana, and being shocked that such a view could remain in the culture so long after slavery ended. The stamps of oppression last for years and years. Indeed, Japan has tried multiple times to eliminate discrimination against the untouchable caste, which is hundreds of years old. However, the bias still remains in places of residence (it's hard to move in Japan) and in names.

Liz Arroyo mentioned that names are critical. This is certainly true, not just in the Japanese example, but in Jaleh's example above, and in cases of ethnic division. Names are also critical in my Varin caste system, so if you're creating an oppressive situation, think about how you might use names to your advantage.

At that point we returned to the question of the invisibility of privilege, and the attitude of "I don't see what everybody is complaining about," which is extremely common. Jaleh notes that people have a hard time seeing beyond their own problems. Dale remarked that the effects of privilege may be visible but attributable to other factors. In particular he said that individual quality is a very strong myth of America, because we don't tend to take into account the many ways we are helped by institutions and by our own social connections.

K said that coming out as homosexual switches your position of privilege. Suddenly you're experiencing prejudice that you didn't before, and it makes you more grateful for what you have.  A different kind of switch in privileged status is the one I experienced when I went to live in Japan and suddenly became a minority (in our dorm we had a saying, "only foreigners steal," because when our tv was stolen by someone who broke in from outside, we were blamed for it). Dale observed that people in a privileged group are quick to point out when someone has broken free of oppression and achieved success, giving such unusual cases too much credence in evaluating how much progress has been made against that oppression by society in general. There is a price to pay for moving beyond your social position - such as when a woman who does well in a large company is accused of sleeping around to achieve her success. Privileged people are also careful not to be brought down by exposing themselves to less "cool" people, even if those people are also powerful. Dale mentioned Downtown Abbey as a place to find great examples of this (someone falling in love with a chauffeur! scandal!). In the Australian penal colonies, they considered it very important to separate "the races" - which to them meant keeping the English separate from the Irish!

With that, I have caught up on my hangout reports (whew!). I know there were a number of people who had hoped to participate in this hangout, and I'm sorry we couldn't include you.