Representation And Inclusion - Tumblr Posts

Dilemma (please help XD)

Hellooooooooooooo! So! I have a question for literally anyone, and I hope that my question makes sense XD.

For those who know me, or do not, I am a writer. Unfortunately I can’t say that I do this professionally, yet. Regardless of that, I recently had a very very good idea for a trilogy series, and I am gonna go and run with it. As I progress I might start leaking more information, but that’s the jist of the situation.

Now comes the “source”(? loose term) Of my dilemma.

I am white, passing at least (my family is Guatemalan, but my bio dad is white so I pass as such) and before anyone jumps to anything, I’ve done research and such. Reason why I’ve done research is I want to be very inclusive in my books, I believe everyone deserves to look in a book at one point in their lives and be like “hey! There’s someone like me.”. Now, I might not get every form of representation in this series (oh, you’d better believe I have other plots to include more), cause that’s a little impossible sometimes when you don’t want to have too many main characters. But, here comes my dilemma.

I don’t want race, sexuality, religion, ability, gender, or anything like that to define my characters. There are some characters that I will have little displays of culture and “educated facts” with, but I won’t for everyone. And that’s because I feel as though, people can just....exist. It doesn’t need to be dove into, people can just exist. Someone once asked the author Marie Lu why she didn’t go into detail or anything about her character Day (Daniel) Wing from her series Legend being a poc, he’s part Mongolian. She said that, Day didn’t think it was worth mentioning, he didn’t really care about it. He just, existed as such.

And though I know there are people that take their culture and heritage very seriously (hence why some characters may display as such), other characters are simply just going to...exist. And I think that’s fine, that’s not my dilemma. 

My dilemma is, in a series with quite a bit of diversity (planned), I want to make a “rift” between characters (can you tell I’m trying so hard not to give away my plot? XD). There will be a split. And what I am concerned about, is people getting the wrong idea and thinking I’m villainizing any sort of diversity that happens to fall in on my “villain” side. I am most certainly not doing that, I would never. For those who know me irl, or even just online, they can tell you that I care deeply about making people happy, and not upsetting or insulting anyone. And don’t worry, I do have a plan here for the plot and all that, I just don’t want to come across as a white author slamming anyone because I made a certain person a “villain”. I truly do not want this to be the case. I just want my characters to simply exist, though diversity is included, it’s not their...entirety, if that makes sense. My question is, how on Earth would I go about this, without making anyone think I’m “villainizing” a certain group or person? Cause I’m not, I just want to let people know, if that’s even possible. 

I genuinely want to do good with this trilogy. I have a good idea, and I just want to tell stories, that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, tell my stories, make people happy. If anyone has any advice on my dilemma, please let me know. I really want this to be good, I do. For all of you who actually read all that, thank you so much for your time. Have a great day or night! 

Too long, didn’t read: Hi! I write books, I’m writing a trilogy, I’m including a lot of diversity, but how do I do this without “villainizing” anyone and just letting characters exist? Have a nice day or night!