(no subject)

[wolffyluna]

On a lighter note than previous posts-- I am amusingly easy to nerdsnipe. It does not take a lot to get me over-thinking things.

A little while ago, I was writing a fic where I had to describe a character's skintone in a somewhat... purple-prose-ish manner (The POV character was very much [heart eyes] over this other character, so it made sense for the narration to get a little florid.) But I wanted to double check that I hadn't accidentally stumbled into describing this character in a weird and/or racist manner. I mean, I was reasonably sure it hadn't gotten weird, but unknown unknowns, you know?

"Wait! I remember that Writing With Color has a skin tone description guide thingamybob. That seems like a reasonable way to do a quick double check."

And I double checked, and the phraseology I'd used was even one of the ones they recommended.

But then I got nerdsniped. By the list of minerals you could use to describe skin tone. Most of them are pretty reasonable? Though if you described people as having "skin like gypsum" it's going to sound like they have whole body dandruff issues (gypsum is famously soft and powdery), and describing someone as being pyrite-coloured will make them sound metallic. But the nerdsnipe train did not stop there.

I got distracted by "what minerals could you reasonably use to describe skin color, if it weren't for the fact that they are kind of obscure?" (Biotite and augite are both black+kinda shiny, feldspar is a desaturated pinky-beige colour, those three would be useful if people knew what there were.) Then I got distracted by minerals that would be technically reasonable but confusing skin tone descriptions. (Garnet can be an orangey-brown, but it's usually red. Sphalerite is fun, because it too can be an orange-brown-- as well as pretty much any other colour. Untarnished bornite is a nice bronze-y colour, that would be so useful for descriptions if it weren't for the fact that a) most people don't know bornite and b) the most bornite is pretty hecking tarnished, and when it's tarnished... well, it's not nicknames "peacock ore" for nothing.)

I got to thinking "I could write a short silly story only using minerals to describe people!" ... before thinking "Or I could do something actually productive with my time. Yeah. Let's do that."