In other news, Irene Kuo is a genius. I’m down to 6 recipes picked out of her Key to Chinese Cooking (tea eggs, cha siu, white-cut chicken, two broccoli recipes, and the sweet-sour sauce), and they all worked out great. Also, the explanations are really clear on why you should do stuff, and it makes for way easier cooking.

While googling stuff on how to use cornstarch, I found this book: On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee. Science and cooking? I’m sold… (but broke)

Recipe of the day: creative carrot cake (didn’t have raisins, so chopped up prunes after removing the stones; didn’t have orange zest, so added Orange Blossom instead; didn’t have walnuts, so put in pecans. And not entirely sure I had the right quantity of carrots. This could be fun)

Right. Back to the %%% story.

I tracked 172 main characters: the arbitrary part of the selection was choosing whether a character should be included or not. I went with “has significant part in plot”, but even that is debatable… If a character appeared several times (in different stories), I only counted them once.

In brackets behind, are the same numbers by protagonist (70 all in all)

GENDER

Male:    44.2% (35.7%)
Female: 45.3% (58.6%)
Other:    10.5% (5.7%)

“Other” includes mostly asexual gods and aliens.

RACE
Asian:  48.8% (48.5%)
Caucasian:  22.1% (24.3%)
Hispanic: 2.3% (2.9%)
Native American: 15.1% (14.3%)
Unknown: 0.6% (2.9%)
Other: 11.05% (7.1%)

“Other” includes gods I couldn’t classify with a particular origin, machines, and the odd alien or two.

I suspect the main reason there aren’t more Native American characters, ie Aztecs, is that I have a bunch of series in there and counted those characters only once. Also, I haven’t thrown in either of my two novels, both of which are packed to the gills with Aztecs, Mayas and Incas.

Also, it’s very rare that a human protagonist has no race whatsoever; I was never very good at defaulting to no culture. (“Caucasian” includes Greeks, Frenchmen, Scots, Spaniards…)

SEXUAL ORIENTATION
Straight: 49.4% (58.6%)
Unknown: 41.2% (35.7%)
GLBT: 7 4.1% (2.9%)
Other: 8 4.7% (2.9%)

“Other” includes those for whom sex is either totally irrelevant (machines), or proceeding from a different logic  (aliens, some gods).

The astonishing of people without any sexual orientation whatsoever is mainly due to the fact that sex and/or relationships tend to be a faraway preoccupation for most of my characters. Even when I put “straight”, I often did so because the person was married to someone of the opposite gender.

AGE
0-17: 15.7% (18.6%)
18-35: 24.4% (37.1%)
36-65: 30.2% (24.3%)
66+: 2.3% (2.9%)
Varies: 3.5% (4.3%)
Other: 23.8% (11.4%)

“Other” includes various catergoris of ageless beings (machines, gods and other immortals or long-lived people). I converted everything to a “modern” scale: ie, a fifty-year-old Aztec was already a very old man (I used typical lifespans to normalise everything). 

CLASS
Ruling Class: 12.2% (8.6%)
Upper Class: 18.6% (20.0%)
Middle Class: 29.1% (37.1%)
Working Class: 16.3% (24.3%)
Varies: 2.9% (2.9%)
Other: 20.9% (7.1%)

I limited this to human characters, given how few aliens and machines I had. I suspect I could have assigned a social class to every robot and every alien around, depending on their place within the pecking order of the universe, but I was tired of crunching numbers…

Like Vy, I was surprised at how easy this was, based on occupation and resources. Also surprised at how many rulers I have going around; I thought there would be much fewer of them, since I dislike writing about the higher spheres of power.

ABILITY
Able: 84.9% (92.9%)
Disabled: 15.1% (7.1%)

Those are mostly mental problems.

Interesting stats: clearly,  there are some lacks in the sexual orientation department (actually, in the sex/romance department full stop). And I must put older characters in my fiction.

(I would say putting in more different races would be nice, but given that I have to research a culture to death before I feel confident enough to include a character from it, I think I’ll stick to improving my Chinese, Vietnamese and Indians before I move on to other things).