To be faithful or not?

Actually Tibet belongs to West-China, even South-West China (it borders with India)

Recently I've seen rather a lot of mixed-race couples in American TV-shows, so do you think this would still be an issue?

Yes, sadly it's still a very big issue.
One that is far too large of a discussion to have in a forum like this.
But the notion of a "post-racial" America is unfortunately a false one.
What you see on TV doesn't begin to reflect the deep-rooted race/color/religion/ethnicity issues of this country.
Regardless, it would still be infuriating to have characters that represented other cultures erased from EQ.

I see that you are in China.
My errors in geography aside, I'm curious if the Go-Backs also seemed to be from that area to you?

But since the movie would only be an other form of media (and therefore not reflect the real situation, the same way as TV-shows don't), wouldn't it be possible to keep Leetah and the rest of the Sunfolk as they are? It would be really weird to see a "Caucasian Leetah"...


In my opinion, the Go-Backs look as if they we're influenced by the looks of Altai or Alaskan native tribes (I think, people from the Altai-region first settled in the Americas, so they naturally have things in common). But also a bit like the images of Stone-Age people, we make.

That's our point, actually.
Razzle and I have both been saying that the Sunfolk should stay brown, as they are now.
In an earlier post I was expressing why that's so important to me (and will be to other young people of color).

Thanks for your insight on the Go-Backs.

just to be clear, i'm not saying here how i'd like the movie to end up like

i'm more sort of expressing my fears on what they might do to screw this movie up...

How interesting, I have read both these into them, yet also some viking elements. The warrior culture, and the natural take of the death in battle ("She is gone. We will dance for her") feels scandinavian to me. We also have the same-people, norwegian-swedish-finnish native tribes of which some are reindeer herders)Actually, the mounts of Go-Backs were translated to "reindeer" in the swedish edition.

The sunfolks to me, speaks of Africa and the middle-east. A lot of ancient Egypt with the sun.

What I'm trying say is, that keeping the ethnicity (sorry about the spelling if incorrect) may be the best thing to do-as you please almost every nation there is.

hm, the Sunfolk strike me rather as native Americans from arid areas than African. Since my mother's major was Ancient Egypt Sciences, I've grown up with a lot of Egyptian stuff and Sunfolk-style doesn't look like it.

There is no "Asian" tribe, either (and our Asia reaches from East-Turkey to Japan, so what's "Asian"?). When using the Chinese search-engine baidu.com, you don't get any info about EQ in Chinese, just Western wikipedia-entries. I doubt EQ is better known in Korea or Japan.

I would have to disagree here.
Tier (and whoever his people were) has a distinctly Native American feel.
But the Sunfolk definitely read as African-based to me.
Just as you point out the enormous diversity on the continent of Asia, the same holds true for the continent of Africa.
I think it's splitting hairs to expect them to be completely identical to a specific culture (they are elves on an earth-like, though not earth, planet in an alternate time-line, after all).
So while they may not follow the text book definition of Egyptian society (which changed somewhat with each of the various cultures that conquered and ruled there at different points in history), there is still myriad African cultures that the Sunfolk seem to be drawn upon and/or influenced by.

The Sunfolk seem to me like African, Indian, or Arabic (though Rayek's outfit struck me as Native American). The gold jewelry and the desert hospitality particularly remind me of Arabia! (They wouldn't even turn away their attackers, Cutter's tribe -- granted they were elves..) I've always wondered, though, why Savah herself was so dark if she crossed the desert with her family? Perhaps they flesh-shaped their skin to protect themselves from the brighter desert sun, rather than just naturally getting that skin tone? Hmm... I think I'm getting WAAAAY too into all the technicalities here, though! (I feel like the fan club in Galaxy Quest! ^_^)

LOL! We are getting ridiculous with this, aren't we?
I agree with you. A few points to consider though...
Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Western Sahara... much of northern Africa extends "Arabia".
Gold is virtually synonymous with Africa (there's a reason why Ghana was formerly referred to as the "gold coast").
I could write pages and pages about what colonization did to thriving and largely peaceful cultures all over the continent.
But I don't want to get political here.

I think Savah's age largely explains her color.
Having been in the desert for what would be a millennium to humans, I would think her body would adapt on it's own.
But you have an interesting theory there.
I always imagined that natural selection also played a part in the brown skin becoming a genetic trait (much the way that shorter bodies seemed to be advantageous for most of the elf tribes).
I don't recall Savah ever mentioning what happened to her family.
Given that the Sunfolk are immortals, shouldn't there have been more left that shared her traits (height, in particular)?
So I wonder if the harsh sun killed off some of the first settlers the way it almost killed off the Wolfriders before thy found Sorrow's End (and the ones whose bodies adapted survived and the traits passed on).

Female "Aramco Brats" can often be spotted by our gold jewelry, emblazoned with the crossed swords and palm trees of our childhood home. Eastern Jewellers in Al Khobar was a favorite haunt, and probably still is.

One distinctive characteristic of the Sun Village is the cacti, native to North and Central America. Absent are tumbleweeds, native to Russia, and the date palm, a common crop in the Arabian peninsula.

The people native to the Arabian peninsula vary from fair olive skin to rich black. This is because the Mideast has been a crossroads of migration between Africa and Asia for tens of thousands of years. The Sun Folk appear to uniformly have copper brown skin, which makes me associate them with Southwest USA or Central American aboriginal people. In any case, I strongly agree that Leetah and her people should be portrayed as people of color.


(BTW This is really off topic, but I have been watching "The Big Bang Theory" occasionally, ever since the Elfquest comic appeared. In every single episode that features Raj, is it obligatory to remind viewers that he's from India?)

Fair enough.
But I'm compelled to point out the presence of camels (zwoots), which are definitely not native to the Americas, but are native to north Africa.
Further, while there are no native cacti in the form that we all think of, there are peyote and aloe that are native to the Sahara region.

Huh -- well, I'm sadly poor at geography and local flora, but that's okay! =P Rayek seemed to have much fairer skin than Leetah on the cover of the novel, in any case, and it seemed like I'd seen some variation in skin tones in the comics. I'm not sure where I'd gotten the idea, from the comics, the novel, or my own silly head, but I was sure they DID have dates/palm trees! Hmmmm.... (I even have a fanfiction character who's a Sunfolk/Wolfrider descendant born in the Sun Village called "Fig", so that goes to show you what plants I assume grow there!) Anyhow, about Raj from BBT, I think that's just part of the obligatory tacky humor. =P

Aloe is an Old World plant, but I thought peyote was native to the Southwest. I think the zwoots are an imaginary animal that is primarily equine, with camel features. Camels being native to North Africa and Arabia, and horses being Asian, the Zwoot is definitely an Old World hybrid.

In terms of design, the Sun Village incorporates imagery from different arid regions around the earth: Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. The geometrical motifs, such as in Rayek's headband, could be Native American or West African. When Leetah first appears, her fringed skirt gives her an American cowgirl look. I think Savah is the most Africanesque Elf, with her official headdress and throne.

The huts look like an homage to Gaudi, but the mud brick construction reminds me of North Africa and the Mideast. Rockshaping in general brings to mind Dali's surreal images of the Spanish desert. The Sun Village would look more Precolumbian if it were made up of cliff dwellings, with the basin being used for crops and outdoor activities.

(Raj is starting to remind me of African-American tokens in 1970s TV shows... )

+ I've yet to hear of redhead with green eyes ( Leetah, Shenshen) or natural strawberry blonds (Ruffel) among the Native Americans, while they are frequent among the Kabyles and Amarzhig of the Atlas (Mountains of the Northern Sahara).
I do think Wendy took features from many desert cultures to mold her Sun Villagers, just as she used features of many Arctic cultures (Inuit, Laps, Icelandic, etc.) for her Go-Backs, and her Wolfriders combine Greek, Celtic, Germanic, Native American, Western African, and Jewish characteristics in their culture and lore.