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Diversity is one of those things I have a love-hate relationship with. On one hand – yes, it’s real and needs to be actually realistically portrayed in books/media. On the other hand, it’s so over-pushed in secular fiction in an unrealistic and ungodly manner that I sort of hate trying to deal with it. I’m getting really tired of the “offhand comments” about a girl having a girlfriend and vise versa for guys I’ve been seeing in both movies and books lately. It’s inserted for no reason other than “diversity” and drives me nuts. XD

That, and the romanticism involving mental illnesses/etc. Can we have a love interest that’s not depressed or anxious, for once in the new century? Please? It’s one thing to portray it realistically and to have it there for a reason – but it’s another to just shove it in there “because”. It’s halfway insulting and promotes the type of mentality we see about such things all the time in media – that they need to be coddled and accepted as normal. (And, I’m not trying to say that having a mental illness is necessarily bad – but thinking about harming yourself is certainly not normal and people shouldn’t be pushing for it to be accepted as normal. It’s one thing to have the issue – it’s another thing to never try to overcome the issue because such things are “normal” and accepted as fine.) But anyhow – I’d love to see a romance involving two people that aren’t depressed, anxious, or toxic. It would be nice to see a few wholesome romances every now and then, you know? You can be void of mental illnesses and still have a complex relationship and tension. (*cough* Ever heard of Pride & Prejudice, or Emma, modern romance writers?)

That said – I do think it’s important to see in fiction. I’ve yet to see a novel or movie in the “Christian” genre that handles something like divorce well, and that’s something that’s been around for just about forever. I’ve never seen one that handles something like mental illnesses what I would call “well”. The closest I can say is that The Chronicles of Narnia handle the idea of death and triumph over evil well, and The Oath handles redemption and paranoia rather excellently. A Wrinkle In Time also handles the idea of unconditional love very nicely, in my opinion. But none of those are very “modern” novels.

As for racial and cultural diversity – fantasy seems to do this semi-well half the time. I’ve seen some genuinely interesting cultures and races in some novels, like in The Wingfeather Saga or The Songkeeper Chronicles. Personally – I’d like to see a novel with more variety than just copy+pasting our cultures into fantasy with a little mix-up for “originality’s” sake. Can we have some super high-tech advanced pirate-people? And black aristocratic mercenaries employing some “Asian” soldiers? How about having a non-16th century England based culture of white people in stuffy coats, but instead a bunch of warring tribes and groups? Why not have them be voyagers or mountain folks? Or traders? Fantasy doesn’t have to be set in medieval times. It can be set before them, or after them, or at the brink of “medieval” times or at the downfall of them. Personally, I think it would be far more interesting to set a story as the “medieval” world is developing and borders are being defined, with governing systems still being tested out. Or perhaps in the age of explorers, with set governing dynamics and countries but all of them racing to find the next new undiscovered technology or land. (You know, I say that we technically had at least four “ages of explorers” in the modern world: the actual age of exploration, the industrial revolution, the race to the moon, and the invention of the WWW. Why not set your fantasy world during one of those times, not just the typical “dresses, coats, and horses and swords” era? Imagine having a character who’s working for the government to discover a variant of steam power or gunpowder, and all the other countries are out to kill him and steal his work. Or perhaps he’s developing a new area of magic, or applying magic to a new concept.) There’s diversity in world-building and time period, you know – not just in personalities and race.

Anyhow, I’m going to be quiet now because I need to get back to school since we’re all quarantined to the house and reverting back to homeschooling. XD