Yrurtj

(I've asked quite a few other questions about this story, lol.)

In my post-apocalyptic story, my MC, Eris, is Latina and queer, and her love interest, Caspian, is bisexual and adopted by a black lesbian named Ezrith (who was in love with his biological mother). Caspian is romantically interested in Leo, a Latino gay man who is in a relationship with Alexander, an Asian gay transgender man. This is my main cast, and they're pretty much a mixed bag of everything you could imagine.

I've written them to be as diverse as possible without forcing it. For example, I don't focus on the fact that Leo isn't white; I simply state in passing that he has dark skin and a lilting accent. I don't explicitly state that Caspian isn't straight, it's just to be inferred through his behavior around attractive male and female characters. I don't have neon signs screaming, "Ezrith is lesbian," I just have Caspian explain to Eris that Ezrith was in love with his biological mom.

I know minority representation is a good thing, and I'm not white or straight so I usually make an effort to incorporate minorities into my writing that aren't stereotypical. But is there such a thing as having a story that is "too diverse"? Is it unrealistic to have such a diverse cast of characters? Is it alienating to readers who are white and straight to be put into the shoes of someone who is drastically dissimilar to them?

Is it alienating to readers who are white and straight to be put into the shoes of someone who is drastically dissimilar to them?

Is it alienating for a modern American to read a story about medieval France? Or about short hairy-footed Brits who live in fantasy-land?

Those differences you mention are superficial. End of the day, a person is a person. Who is more drastically dissimilar to me - someone who is attracted to a different subset of people than me, or the medieval knight, for whom the entire frame of reference was different, since the natural order was that the person he married was not the person he loved, the person he loved was married to someone else, and sex was a sin anyway? Whose life is more different from mine - the person whose skin colour is different in my country, or the one who lived before the Industrial Revolution, and was probably illiterate?

If you can tell stories about medieval knights, you can tell stories about guys loving other guys. For that matter, surely one can tell a story set in Mexico? And surely the characters wouldn't be all blue-eyed and blond?

"Too much diversity" only becomes an issue when you start having characters that have no business being there, just so the minority is represented. Writing diversity should help you understand what I'm talking about, though it doesn't seem to be a problem with your story.

It is also helpful to remember that the "white" skin colour is not in fact the most common one in the world. Depending on where your story is set, it is the "everybody's white" preposition that might in fact be unrealistic.

I don't think it's alienating, but it does press my suspension of disbelief a bit to have such a large fraction of the cast be LGBT characters. Gays are something like 3-5% of the population, with the rest of the letters being an even smaller fraction. Having a group of four LGBT characters with no heterosexual ones is unrealistic unless they are together because they are LGBT. Admittedly, a post-apocalyptic society would be fairly Malthusian and thus likely to put a large emphasis on reproduction, meaning them being outcasts for being LGBT is quite reasonable. So if something like this is part of their backstory, then that's totally fine. But if they're a group of survivors that just happen to fill in the acronym I'm going to be rolling my eyes.

The skin color thing would depend on where the story is set. For example, in post-apocalyptic America, just about any racial makeup is perfectly reasonable. Post-apocalyptic China or Russia, I'd be scratching my head as to where this diversity is coming from.

I think you are fine provided that you do not bludgeon the reader with the sexual orientation of your characters.

I do not mind reading about characters that happen to be gay or bisexual as part of who they are, but I do dislike being preached to and told how normal this is. Fine, it is normal for that person - great - just use 2x4s for carpentry - not narrative.

I was reading one novel and quite enjoying it - until it became the story of a young man falling in love with another young man and it became explicit. The story stopped and the preaching began. I put the book down, not because the characters were gay, but because the author was trying to preach at me. We rarely listen to sermons. Falling in love - sure. The heart wants what the heart wants - just no sledgehammer required.

Just tell your story.

On a practical matter, if your story (post apocalyptic if I recall) involved a massive loss of human life, there would be pressure for every woman to bear children. There was a BBC series Survivors that dealt with the issue of repopulation as well as the reassignment of status.

In the age of Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy, it's probably not possible to be "too" diverse when building a team, but I'll play Devil's advocate. (I use the word "team" when maybe I should say "cast".)

what could go wrong

1. 
   Superficial diversity – watch out for diversity checkboxes, like rolling dice to create an RPG character. You already have some of this going on, so the thing to keep in mind is how their diversity might lead to disagreements and incompatible perspectives. You don't want to have the superficial diversity of ethnic/gender/orientation checkboxes, meanwhile all characters speak and act like middleclass college students from a hip town.


2. 
   Captain Planet – Each represents a monotype or stereotype of accents and heritage foods that doesn't really make sense unless they are cultural ambassadors. In your case this might include ethnic cues and cultural signals when the immediate team would adopt similar speech patterns and phrases among themselves. It might also be spread so thinly among all characters, that it becomes decoration rather than character or worldbuilding. A graphic novel can show ethnic diversity in an instant, but in a written narrative you'll have to put it all in the text.


3. 
   They never interact with "their own" – this one comes from Samuel R. Delany, whose template for writing believable female characters says they need to have meaningful friendships with other women. I've also seen Black authors rant about the token Black character who has no other Black friends or family. Extrapolating to LGBT, it may require the spirit rather than the letter of the rule. The idea is to anchor the characters to close friends outside their role on the team. They should have close friends and surrogate families, past relationships, old roommates. No one hatched from an egg yesterday. The other issue is the characters represent their entire [group] if the story doesn't include others who are in that same [group] who act independently of each other.


4. 
   Unintended hierarchies and biases – minority groups have internal minority groups. In your example you have chosen to make your trans character
   also gay. While that does happen, trans people and their straight
   partners are already erased from "LGBT" organizations and your story seems to
   confirm that bias. Teams also have "leaders" and stories have "lead characters", their importance in the narrative (both diagetically and non-diagetically) can defeat the intent. A problem example is a Black female administer/boss/captain. Diagetically, she is an authority in-world, but non-diagetically she is just a foil or supporting character who is to be ignored or disobeyed by the MC. The unintended message is that diversity is allowed only when it conforms to a bias.

Mary Sue stops the holocaust

It's ok to write a fantasy adventure about people you wish you knew in real life. If it feels like a Mary Sue team-up it probably is, but not every story is character-driven. Sometimes it's about the adventure itself and you want friendly faces to join you. Characters will wear "hats" that let us know when they are good or evil, and villains will be melodramatic and underestimate the team. Things will explode. There will be traveling from A to B, and swashbuckling.

Needless to say, that is a different story than the gravitas you've put into some of your other questions. You might have a dissonance between the characters you want to be friends with, and the characters who prevail in a hellish environment. You will need to destroy those characters to achieve what you want. They will have uncomfortable edges and complications to match that universe. The reader will love and hate these characters. They will do unforgivable things to survive. That's the only way to tell that kind of story.

Mary Sue and the holocaust don't mix.

When I read people say "and then I put the book down because it was preaching at me…", what I think has happened is a dissonance between Mary Sue characters who must experience their "awakening" as if it is as important as the holocaust. The reader is rolling their eyes and wondering when it gets back to the plot.

To achieve your diversity-only LGBT team in an apocalypse where most people have died, they are either all together for some reason – like escaping from a concentration camp – or there is healthy suspension of disbelief in order to have the team-up you want – like they meet in a bar on Tatooine and decide to join the rebels. It's unlikely you can tone shift between "empowering" adventure characters, and genocidal oppression without knocking readers out of the story.