Talk:Stina Heks/@comment-38091275-20191005002647/@comment-32987979-20191021225533

@Chicken tornado

I 100% agree that skin color, gender, appearance etc doesn't need to define a character. Just because I'm writing about an African American doesn't mean my story has to be about slavery, right? It's not that the characters would've been better characters just because they were different races. It's just that it's kind of a sign of bad writing.

No one is arguing that the lack of diversity in the series is the worst thing about it, at least I'm not. To me, Shannon doesn't seem to understand the concept of show vs tell. She makes a big point to tell the readers that the Lost Cities is this beautiful place where all races and genders are completely equal and actually don't have any differences other than what they look like, but we don't really see that... we've only seen Caucasians, Asians and African Americans so far (and a few elves described as "tan.")

It all boils down to this: Shannon isn't really putting that much thought into the series. I get it, it's a kids' book, she has deadlines, whatever. Call me a nitpicker if you want. But to me, when you're pretty much building an entirely new world, you really can't just throw in things whenever you want. Thanks to the lack of thought put into this series, there's tons of unanswered questions and plot holes and things that don't make sense. The lack of racial diversity is just another outcome of this.

There's pretty much no negatives to having a diverse cast of characters; it doesn't even really take much more work to just include more races, and there are tons of positives. It satisfies most parties, makes the world feel so much more real, and it shows that you've really thought a good amount about your story and characters. When coming up with my own characters, I like to give them favorite colors, hobbies they enjoy, pet peeves, all those things real people have that may not be majorly important but makes them feel like they're real. To me, ethnicity and race is no different. You don't have to make it define them. Just putting in that extra oomph will make your characters so much more real.