The follow-up question

[james_davis_nicoll]

What is it with green-eyed Asian women in fantasy novels, anyway? Why green? It's not impossible (except under some sort of No True Scotsman rule) but green eyes appear to be very rare in Asian populations.

Not that they are exactly common in other populations (leaving aside the People Who Have Green Eyes group, which have a high percentage of members with green eyes).


[Added in a hurry]

That turns out to be something you shouldn't google for images of if you are at work.

Comments

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

Blue is a baby-animal color, and grey is probably associated with cataracts or eye injuries. Just guessing.

<--- member of People Who Have Green Eyes group

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the question is whether or not this trope began with (or was greatly impacted by) Big Trouble In Little China.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

That turns out to be something you shouldn't google for images of if you are at work.

This would be something akin to hawkwing_lb's comment about looking for genre novels with protagonists with non-normative sexualities and getting as far as typing "lesbian fantasy" into Google at work but realising just in time that most of the results would probably not answer the desired question in a bad way ?

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

That turns out to be something you shouldn't google for images of if you are at work.

Any search terms that include the words "Asian" and "women" probably shouldn't be investigated at work unless the rest of the search terms are VERY specific. And even then, possibly not.

Green eyes are exotic (as are redheads, unless you're in Ireland or Scotland, or in the UK in which case redhead is usually synonymous with Irish or Scottish). Green eyes on (in?) a person who is racially not otherwise likely to have them is even more exotic.

I have mostly green eyes. Technically they are hazel with a brown inner ring and a blue outer ring and then the middle is a fairly vivid green, but mostly what you see is the green. Otherwise I am quite frightfully not exotic in the slightest.

[seawasp]

1) Big Trouble in Little China.

2) Green is an unusual, exotic color (especially in an Asian Woman context) which will have significance.

3) Asian women are a relatively unusual, exotic image for much of the target fanbase.

4) The combination is a knockout punch for many readers. Knock 'em down, take their money, repeat.

[srallen.livejournal.com]

Because Jay Lake can make interesting worlds but isn't very good at populating them?

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

Well, if google image search is any clue, it appears that green eyes almost exclusively appear in women, and it makes it very difficult for them to wear clothing.

[aries-jordan.livejournal.com]

I think you answer your own question with the use of the word "fantasy." Women in fantasy must have either green or violet eyes.

[msss.livejournal.com]

To go with the equally improbable purple-eyed Caucasian women? Personally, I want my kids to have bright blue eyes. Pity about the whole genetics thing.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

I knew a green-eyed Chinese-American woman in college. She was a quarter Russian, via Manchuria if I'm remembering correctly. The effect really was striking, and I'm not sure why. (Not looking on Google Images; anyway I've already had my J. Geils moment this year.)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Standard Mary Sue color (besides violet). The term is usually emerald, and her hair is not black, but raven.

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

Another possible example of a green eyed Asian woman in fiction is Bridget Clancy, who was a supporting character in DC Comics Nightwing. However given that later on her eyes were coloured brown its possible she was wearing green contacts.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

That turns out to be something you shouldn't google for images of if you are at work.

Ah, that brings me back to the days when I assisted in a support classroom for students in junior high who needed assistance. One day, one of my students needed to do research on grizzly bears, and typed in "bears" into the search engine...

[cmattg.livejournal.com]

There are two questions here, I think.

1. As others have mentioned, did the proportion written about change after BTILC came out?

2.What are the numbers compared to green-eyed redheads?

The last also bring up the possible class of red-headed green-eyed Asian women but by that point even non-fannish people will start going, "...and a soprano singing voice and a miniature flying unicorn and and and....."

[connactic.livejournal.com]

I was wondering why you thought it wasn't work-safe, and I then realized I had moderate safe-search on...

[ambitious-wench.livejournal.com]

Green is the new blue.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

As someone who herself has green eyes, I find the perceived risibility of green eyes in fiction to be kind of annoying. OR MAYBE I AM JUST A MARY SUE.


Serious answer: I think it's used when the writer wants to signal "this is a world with lots of interracial marriage/relationships" and the image of someone with what we consider to be an East Asian phenotype with what we consider to be a Northern European eye color is a lazy shorthand for that. I prefer the old-school space-opera technique of calling your first officer Patrice Lumumba Baryshnikov or whatever.


Also, green eyes are the prettiest, and I'll lick fight the poltroon who says otherwise.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

I am one of the "hazel" camp - I've got these greeny/browny eyes with a grey ring around the outside of the iris. But here's the thing - my eyes are a sort of mood ring. They *change colour*. Once I happened to look into a mirror as I was washing my face after a long bout of bawling my eyes out over something, and realised with some consternation that my eyes were cat-green - which probably means I should live out my life being upset, because that gives me the fabled green eyes of legend. Apparently they also sharpen to green if I am really really angry (a fact which someone told me during said period of being mad, so it may have been a little white lie designed to distract me, I don't know, I wasn't buying it at the time, I was mad and I was going to stay mad dammit) Both my parents have brown eyes (my mother has the grey ring around hers, which is probably where I inherited it from). The closest blue that I know of comes from my paternal great-grandfather, who was a blue-eyed blond.

I'm sure there's a genetic pattern in there SOMEWHERE.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Because green eyes are extra-exotic yet more *seemingly* plausible than blue.