"I see white people!"

[robling_t]

Ursula K. LeGuin has finally ripped a well-deserved new one for the SciFi Channel production that alleged to be an adaptation of "Earthsea". I find her remarks on the casting issue to be of particular interest, because should the day ever come when I may be so lucky as to be in that position with the current Manuscript, I'm up against a similar problem: while my Narrator is clearly some derivation of Big Scandahoovian Lunk in his appearance (actually rather subversive in itself, considering that the dominant paradigm for necromancers tends to the "small and weasel-faced"), his sidekick and love-interest is very explicitly a Person Of Contrasting Color -- what, precisely, isn't that vital, she could be rendered as anything from North African to Latina, but the one thing she is not is caucasian. I foresee many future arguments over book covers, and much, much wincing and gnashing of teeth. But first I need an agent, dammit. (Current holdup is that I can't prepare any more letters until I do something about being out of toner, and if I'm going to spend $80 on a toner cartridge, I think I'd just as soon make it $200 for a whole new printer that's not a top-loader, since this one's sucked in so much dirt it's having trouble feeding the sheets.)