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cimoreneLast night as I was lying in bed I suddenly realized that all these fic where people are colorblind until they meet their soulmates (so far in my experience) have completely failed to consider the kinds of effects such a large colorblind population would have on design, industry, and the market.
Consider: What if, say, 70% of the adult population is colorblind? People who can see color, and hence perceive when things clash, are now a minority. Probably one that spends a lot of time wincing at clothes, houses, and everything in the world designed for shades of gray. If color vision is that rare, there's no need to make special provisions to run things for them. Checking that things match is probably a kind of specialty service and most people wouldn't bother to care, which means that the pigment industry will use whichever dyes or paints are most effective for cost/wear to get the shade of gray in their design... which might or might not clash horribly with each other. At the same time, 30% is high enough to make the fantasy of achieving one's soulmate attainable, so color vision is something people freely fantasize about, so color-matching markups can be presented as planning ahead, or a way to appear indistinguishable from the privileged to other color viewers (I'm not quite sure how you'd go about appearing to have color vision to people who don't have it...) Point is, this situation is complex.
And then what if the likelihood of meeting one's soulmate is pretty high, and around 10% of the adult population is colorblind? So the world is set up for people with color vision and now the colorblind are a marginalized group. If you can afford to, you pay extra to make sure your shit matches, so the poor can't, and now color matching is a status marker, which makes paying for it more important for people who can afford it...
...and either way, there's gonna be services set up, or maybe sections of stores where everything already matches, or color codes on clothing tags...
...where's the worldbuilding? Where's the dystopia?????
Consider: What if, say, 70% of the adult population is colorblind? People who can see color, and hence perceive when things clash, are now a minority. Probably one that spends a lot of time wincing at clothes, houses, and everything in the world designed for shades of gray. If color vision is that rare, there's no need to make special provisions to run things for them. Checking that things match is probably a kind of specialty service and most people wouldn't bother to care, which means that the pigment industry will use whichever dyes or paints are most effective for cost/wear to get the shade of gray in their design... which might or might not clash horribly with each other. At the same time, 30% is high enough to make the fantasy of achieving one's soulmate attainable, so color vision is something people freely fantasize about, so color-matching markups can be presented as planning ahead, or a way to appear indistinguishable from the privileged to other color viewers (I'm not quite sure how you'd go about appearing to have color vision to people who don't have it...) Point is, this situation is complex.
And then what if the likelihood of meeting one's soulmate is pretty high, and around 10% of the adult population is colorblind? So the world is set up for people with color vision and now the colorblind are a marginalized group. If you can afford to, you pay extra to make sure your shit matches, so the poor can't, and now color matching is a status marker, which makes paying for it more important for people who can afford it...
...and either way, there's gonna be services set up, or maybe sections of stores where everything already matches, or color codes on clothing tags...
...where's the worldbuilding? Where's the dystopia?????
(no subject)
Date: 1 Oct 2015 12:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4 Oct 2015 01:42 pm (UTC)All the soulmate -matching and -marking tropes that I've encountered so far have left me very cold on their fundamental premises, but some of the actual stories have still been pretty good. However, the sillier the idea, I guess, the harder it is to overcome it (or distract the reader from it for a moment). And the colorblindness one is an exceptionally silly iteration.
(no subject)
Date: 1 Oct 2015 12:59 pm (UTC)One of the things I always get distracted by when I try to write poly-is-normal stories is house sizes and furniture. Big houses are normal, you can buy a bed that fits nine - but I can't figure out how to make a couch that more than four people can cuddle safely on without someone slipping onto the floor. Which leads me to floor cushions, and maybe those are more popular than couches? And everyone drives minivans and not smartcars - and so on. But would people always live together, or would you end up with tiny cabin-clusters, or is one ginormous house more common, and then I forget to design a plot for the story. ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 1 Oct 2015 03:00 pm (UTC)Did you ever read LeGuin's The Dispossessed? It's been years, but the one thing (I think) I remember was the houses they had with place for the different partners.
Loves the floor cushions!!!! I want them NOW!!!
(no subject)
Date: 6 Oct 2015 06:53 pm (UTC)I imagine there are poly groups who have serious negotiations about floor cushions and couches and who prefers what and how they can still be in a total cuddle pile with one on the couch and three on the floor and one who just wants to sit and read and not be touched a whole lot. Dating sites will have these sorts of questions, what is your preferred cuddle position(s) in ranked order. Is this a make or break deal. (You know someone has left a group because of cuddling position incompatibility! Not to mention arguing over the fabric of the floor cushions and hell no I am not cuddling on plaid. WTF.)
(no subject)
Date: 4 Oct 2015 01:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6 Oct 2015 06:53 pm (UTC)