Three things on my break

[mrissa]

1. Nuts! Cashews, specifically. They count as actual food, and I had them with my lunch, and this seems like progress. And lunch went better than breakfast did. I'm still skeptical of dinner (grilling out with the visiting relations for Grandma's birthday), but it's Mother and Dad's house, so I can get myself soup or toast or cereal if I find I'm not up to whatever hunks of meat are on the menu.

2. I'm not sure how to convey to the reader of Dwarf's Blood Mead and The Mark of the Sea Serpent that they should just assume all adult males are bearded. I would say "unless the text says otherwise," but the text isn't going to say otherwise: this is not a society that is much for shaving. I could have endless loving descriptions of whose beard is trimmed short and whose is flowy and whose is kind of scruffy, but this is more likely to give the reader the impression that I am obsessed with beards than that they are the standard around those parts. (And heaven forfend that anyone should ever think...well. It's barely less obnoxious than elaborate fixations on other secondary sex characteristics, in literature written for general enjoyment, is what I'm saying.)

Hmm. There are foreigners. Maybe the foreigners -- but the thing is, while I expect that the foreigners would be more clean-shaven at home, they have just crossed a very cold sea in the middle of winter, with lots of men per boat. Even tepid water for shaving is not going to be at a premium, and their faces will be cold. I suspect that many more of them would have beards than would if they were at home.

I think I've done pretty well with Lisved's small slenderness not being particularly generally appealing in this culture while still appealing to Thrand (so that the point is not "skinny people suck" but rather "such standards are not universal"). I hope I have. I hate it when authors get that wrong. (Edith Pattou, I'm looking at you!) But this is more a visualization (and smell and feel) thing than a social point, really.

Hmmm. Revisions, bah.

3. Bad casting can really ruin a movie. I'm not sure that the musical version of "The Producers" would have been good with someone other than Uma Thurman as Ulla (there is still, for example, the matter of Matthew Broderick to contend with, and the matter of Will Ferrell), but the difference between her dancing and Lee Meredith's in the original was just plain depressing. I have liked Uma Thurman in other roles -- "Gattaca," for example, and somewhat in "The Truth About Cats and Dogs." But she was not supposed to be any kind of free spirit in either. The difference in body language plus the plot difference where Ulla suggests that they go to Brazil meant that all of the movie that dealt with her was about a calculated little schemer, not someone who was enjoying herself. Bleh.

I feel like John D. MacDonald on this point, but sometimes Travis McGee is right and exactly choreographed sex appeal is really not the thing.

Comments

[jebbypal]

I suspect that many more of them would have beards than would if they were at home.

but you could have some of them searching for tools in order to shave because they prefer to be beard-less and the indigenous folk laughing at them about it or not having the materials they want.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The ones with onstage time are all POWs.

I suppose I could have someone complaining about the outlandish requests these foreigners make, like sharp implements for POWs who haven't given their parole. Hmmm.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Now you've got the "personal grooming implement" scene from Pitch Black stuck in my head.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Even tepid water for shaving is not going to be at a premium, and their faces will be cold. I suspect that many more of them would have beards than would if they were at home.

The foreigners want to shave; someone native just has to notice this and think that's weird in a way that conveys what their default is. Endless loving descriptions, even if they don't look like your hang-up, could have a hard time not looking like your POV's hang-up.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, endless loving descriptions were really not the option. I am not convinced that my POV character doesn't have a thing for a nice beard. But she is resolutely Not Going Into That Right Now.

[markgritter.livejournal.com]

So... is Icelandic fiction bereft of cross-dressing plots? Or do they shave and/or add a fake beard as necessary?

Your noir detective shaves, doesn't he? Or does the general beardedness continue into the future.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

His name is Sorkvir Sturlasson. Does that sound like the name of a clean-shaven person to you?

Most saga cross-dressing involves veils and is MTF; I don't know what they'd do with FTM, because it tends not to come up.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Could you just describe a character with something like, "His beard was unusually short, for a dwarf of his age"?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No dwarfs onstage, and the problem is that if it's a human, I think a lot of people from a largely beardless human culture will assume that it's short for someone who has a beard at all.

Wait, what am I talking about! I write fantasy and SF! That's not a largely beardless human culture at all!

[songwind.livejournal.com]

You might include a phrase like, "and of course, like all the men of his country, he wore a beard."

Perhaps a casual conversation between two of the scruffy faced persons who had been to foreign parts about how they scrape their faces and look like little boys or women?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think it'll probably come up in a complaint about the POWs and their insane demands.

Someone who posts here but might not want their name attached to this story told me about a toddler child in their life who insisted on referring to a particular male friend of the kiddo's parents as "she." Finally they figured out that this was the only adult male the kid knew who didn't have facial hair.

From a potential reader's POV

[careswen.livejournal.com]

Of all the possibilities suggested, these are my favorite.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

An alternative to using the POWs and their insane demands would be to have some younger male character be inordinately proud of his nascent beard in a way that makes it clear that every adult male has a beard.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Alas, but I have no room for such a character.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I'd just do it through indirect description. Rather than telling me what somebody's beard looks like, tell me he's scratching it, or trimming it, or tugging on it, or picking food out of it, or has mead dripping off of it, etc. Work it into their body language. God knows I fiddle enough with my hair, so one could easily convey the length of it by talking about what I do with it.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Yes, and not just body language or social issues. if I were having this problem, I might take some book of similar style and highlight all the references to 'hair' or to clothing, and see how similar mentions could be made about various characters' beards.

Hm, sometimes 'hair' could be replaced with 'hair and beard'. "He came in with his hair and beard full of snowflakes." "Though his figure was stooped, his hair and beard showed little gray."

Like 'hair' or 'hat', during action a beard can get snagged by brambles, wet, dirty, get a bug caught in it, get grabbed by an opponent, by a baby, by a squirrel.... :-)

[(Anonymous)]

Glad to hear you are feeling better. Love from OH from your mom-in-law

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hope your trip is going well!

[writerjob.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm .... maybe a snicker that somebody's beard is so thin he's probably a eunuch ...
A manly _man_ of course, has a luxuriant beard.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

They're not jerks, they're just unshaven.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I read your title as "Three things on my beak," and briefly wondered.

B

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am now a balancing duck.

I initially mistyped that. How unfortunate.

Duck

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"I am now a balancing duck."

There are worse fates.

B

Re: Duck

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm often either a grammatical owl or a literate chicken. You may judge for yourself if either of those is a worse fate.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Could you have a character misstep and confuse a man for a woman? "Oh, I'm sorry, you looked like a girl-- I mean, I thought you were, at first-- I mean, I saw you didn't have a beard and-- drat."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

See, but there isn't one. If there was a beardless adult male, I could just observe that he was without having to get awkward about it. But there isn't.

Ideas:

[thorintatge.livejournal.com]

Have a character ask about some man that he/she hasn't met: "What did he look like? Short beard or long?"

Have a character reflect on at what age his beard came in, as it relates to his social standing or childhood insecurities.

Just using the phrase "unusually thin beard" could do the trick, since if beards are not taken for granted an unusally thin beard would be called "stubble."

Re: Ideas:

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That first one is really good. May well come up. Not that the others are bad -- although my usage of "stubble" is more in terms of its length than its thickness -- but it's fairly easy to work into existing plot and characterization.