odditycollector

I was pondering something similar with a novel I just finished. *chinhand* In that I have a number of characters whom I know people are going to assume are caucasian. And aren't. One's going to come as a slight blink towards the end when her surname is finally used and very CLEARLY indicates that at least one parent is Chinese, but the rest are largely going to pass by, because nobody on-screen cares enough to note "oh, and by the way, she's East Indian/she's Inuit/he's Haida/she's black." Any more than anyone would note "he's Anglican" or "he's Presbyterian" or "he's Jewish." Within the context of the story, sexual orientation is going to get noted a lot more than visible "race" or religion, due to the fact that lovers and past relationships get mentioned and play into the story. Whereas the other two things . . . don't.

Which is interesting, because if it were a movie, these things would all be obvious. You'd be able to SEE that my protag has East Indian heritage, despite her name; that there are all of three "white" team members on one of the groupings, and even that classification gets problematic; and so on. Within the text, you can't, because the point of view character I use does not give a shit, and it would be completely out of character for her to do so.

(not to mention the difficulty I have with the non-humans of that series, and how BIZARRE and non-sensical they find our "race" categorisations at all.)