Shades of Grey*

Kaigou:

TL;DR version: the predominant rationale for white=good and black=bad is based in racism.

It’s not that hard to try something else. It just requires a few seconds’ thought (although that does require a willingness to be arsed enough to be aware of the need). In this story, frex, if a witch gets power from controlling life, call that a Life Witch. If it’s via torturing living creatures to death, call that one a Death Witch. There, see? Two seconds’ thought and I came up with a descriptive term that actually tells me something — and doesn’t require I tap into racist slurs to grasp the text’s meaning.

I’m tired of books featuring the Good Gal/Guy vs the Great Evil — especially in UF.

Why why why? It’s just such a simplistic view.

Which, I suppose, makes sense to why it’s so popular amongst writers. It’s easy.** In terms of worldbuilding, plot etc. The bad guy is always the person on the other side, wearing the wrong type of clothing.

But that also makes it boring, especially when you have a lazy writer who’s just reusing tropes and cliches without Owning them.

I get that readers like it. We are talking about fiction here, and it’s nice to have a world where problems are as easy to fix as Bang Bang Bang, bad guys all dead. I just would like a bit more choice, damn it.

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*Incidentally, the Evil Jackie Kessler has co-written Shades of Grey with Caitlin Kittredge and unfortunately, I haven’t read it. But the first book, Black & White, was fab fab fab! And despite the title, the difference between good and evil is NOT black and white.

**Well, it makes sense to me that if you always know who the bad guy is, then you just shoot them. But if they aren’t necessarily bad, you can’t do that.

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