Thread by @HoldenShearer

It's fucking appalling how many fantasy worlds seem to be occupied entirely by white people (with perhaps a few POC crammed in a distant jungle across the sea-- Christ!). Fantasy has possibly the lowest bar to clear for diversity of ANY genre, and yet fails to do so CONSTANTLY.

As diversity becomes a more mainstream subject it also becomes a more nuanced one, with people taking up discussions around #ownvoices and wanting to see their lives and experiences portrayed by people who have... lived them, rather than as imagined by some white guy. Wild.

Which does not, of course, absolve us white guys of a moral obligation to make things better on this front, it just reveals the complexity that was always there.

But! O, fantasy to the rescue!

While many human experiences are universal, -societal- experiences don't have to be when you are literally making up your societies and worlds whole-cloth. The bar is greatly lowered.

You don't have to wrestle with portraying the Black American experience going on nothing but research and secondhand accounts without having lived it because this ain't America, it's Middle-Earth or Narnia or Krynn or Westeros or The Territories or Whatever.

What suffices for good enough in a fantasy world, for representation, for diversity? It's easy. Let your readers
1) See themselves in the story
2) Without being condescended to, marginalized, infantalized, othered into near-orcdom.

There is a certain power in just being able to see people who look like you, who are superficially like you, included as part of a world (and not a fucking stupid part like near-animalistic cannibal jungle shitheads wearing masks as tall as they are).

This is the EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD to do with your fantasy work, and yet in the year of our Lord 2018 idiots are still pitching tantrums about why there must only be white folks in the Witcher's I Can't Believe It's Not Poland (which includes griffons and succubi).

Make it black. Make it queer. Make it intersectional. It's easy, it's ethical, it's what worlds actually look like, and we're generally expected to give a shit about our imaginary creations at least -feeling- like a real place, yes?

Do better, fantasy. This is a fucking gimme.