Talk:Stina Heks/@comment-38091275-20191005002647/@comment-32987979-20191011193611

I always imagined Stina with tan/Hispanic skin and shorter hair personally, but that's just me.

My thing about diversity is that yeah, you could argue that elves with pale skin is just more common; that's just the way elves are. But Shannon created the series, and she chose not to include more diversity. The only real main characters who are described as being a different race are Tam and Linh, and they weren't added until a while later. I don't really think Wylie or Prentice count because honestly, they are hardly ever mentioned at all.

Race in the Elvin world is a strange topic anyway... as is diversity. I could rant for hours about how none of it makes sense and how things could've been done better. I just really think it's a result of Shannon not thinking enough about the world she's created. But that's a topic for another day.

Shannon is a white female with blonde hair. She made the protagonist also a blonde-haired white girl. She also included her real-life pet cat, Marty, in the series. It's clear she takes a lot of inspiration from herself and her life. When coming up with a character, she probably just makes them white as default as that's where her mind subconsciously goes. I'm guilty of doing that, too, but I always try to go back and change things for the sake of diversity. But Shannon's writing a kids' book and has deadlines, so it's possible she's just not putting as much thought into it.

Anyways, there's really no harm in putting more racially-diverse characters into a story and in my opinion only makes it better. To me I like to think of my characters as real people, and I put a lot of thought into creating them; giving these characters different races makes them feel so much more real. Not gonna lie, I am a bit biased against Shannon is general because I have a bit of criticism about her books (criticism about the story itself, not the lack of diversity.) So that probably influences my opinion. All I'm saying is, it wouldn't have hurt to make Stina or any other semi-important character a different race.