Is there such a thing as too much diversity? How to avoid coming off as laughably pandering?

So I'm writing a story that could be described Sailor Moon with the Scouts replaced by the teenagers from Captain Planet. I wanted to have this multi-cultural cast from different backgrounds who attend the same high school, get mythological powers that connect to their respective backgrounds and use those powers to fight evil monsters.

My concern is how diverse can I make them without going into tokenism and mix-matching certain things without getting called out on cultural appropriation or some such. The story is set on alternate universe earth that split sometime during WW 2, the cast attends a prestigious school in Prague (which is now the capital of a still united Czechoslovakia).

So you have the girl from Britain, Emma (she's of African descent) and she gets paired with Angelic powers based on Christianity Another girl is from Hong Kong, Lisa, she's Chinese so she's gets the powers of the moon goddess Chang'e From India, we have a boy named Aamir, who gets powers of a Naga (Think Were-Serpent, fast and stealthy)

There are 3 others planned to fill out the team (planning an RPG style group but that's later) and one of the characters I thought of made me scratch my head a bit. I have spoken about this in the LGBT thread; Blair is a girl from Canada. She and her dad hold Buddhist beliefs and by sheer cosmic coincidence, she gets Asura powers (multi armed god of war) from Buddhist myth.

My concern with Blair is that; would it be weird for the white girl from Canada to get powers based on what is ostensibly Asian mythology? In addition, should I just can Christianity too and just go for pagan myths i.e folklore and legends that tie to the regions the kids belong too? So Blair could be a Wendigo instead for instance (though again, that would be more First Nations stuff).

edited 19th May '17 7:45:34 AM by SmokingBun

I think there's no such thing as "too much diversity," and I think a bigger concern would be to make sure that the representations of this diverse group are well-researched and treated with respect. Concentrate on making sure that the characters stand on their own and not just there to "fill a quota," and make sure to do some research to avoid harmful stereotypes.

Beyond the avoidance of stereotyping, which I trust you'll likely manage, the problem becomes coming up with a convincing reason for all of these disparate people to come together. The claim that "too much" diversity equals pandering stems from the idea that, for the most part, people of widely different nationalities and ethnicities do not come together in groups for organic reasons. This idea has some obvious truth to it (immigrant groups forming their own communities, going out of their way to marry only within their own community, etc), but can be easily overcome. For one, you have a school setting, which can easily explain how all these folks know each other. Are they acquainted with each other, are they friends, before they become..Sailor Scout Planeteers, or whatever? That's likely what you'd need to be careful of, and even then, you could probably get away with handwaving it.

edited 19th May '17 10:52:50 AM by Robbery

I do not believe that there is such a thing as too much diversity per se. However, I believe that readers can tell the difference between diversity that can realistically be expected to occur in the setting and the sort of box-checking diversity that leaves willing suspension of disbelief in the dust. A backstory explaining why the school in Prague attracts all those people would help.

Also, I would be more rigorous in defining what each character's "background" is and why it matters. Greater clarity on that could resolve the issue that you recognize with Blair.

edited 19th May '17 11:05:41 AM by drwhom

@dragonfire5000

Oh certainly; I plan to have them be fully fledged characters first and the cultural stuff would just be flavor on top or used to highlight a unique problem. Most of the conflict comes from regular school issues or whichever monster of the week they are fighting.

@Robbery

I don't exactly want them to be so far flung to the point you may ask, "Why travel so far for high school of all things?"; it's more that couple of them were already living in the country but have roots/family in different regions or in the case of Blair moved to the city her father was working in while leaving friends in Canada behind.

Couple of them are already friends, Blair is the newcomer who knows exactly one other person. The rest have either been living here since childhood or moved years back for whatever reason. Most of them are acquainted with each other.

In my story Prague is kind of a Silicon Valley esque tech hub with lots of start ups popping up and people managing to find the city fairly affordable to live in compared to some of their European neighbors

@Dr Whom

Being an alternate universe, there are a couple of reasons why Prague and by extension Czechoslovkia has become such a hub of commerce and culture, a place not too different from New York City.

Part of the reason is that the country (mostly due to supernatural reasons i.e. the sudden appearance of magical creatures in WW 2) avoided a lot of the fallout from after the war and managed to quickly recover, becoming a first world nation surrounded by those still recovering.

Coming to Blair; her background is what I provided. I suppose I could make her half-Indian since that would justify her powers to mythology connection better.

Agreed on the "background" thing being odd. Take some inspiration from Shaman King maybe?

Everyone uses the same "magic system", and while the nature of their patron affects their powers, so do the channeler's techniques. E.g. one place has people making arrows out of thunder spirits, and another has them turning into wolves by wearing wolf spirits as cloaks... but if they compared notes then they could figure out how to turn thunder into armor or wolves into swords.

The reason the Indian guy gets naga powers isn't because he's Indian, it's just because the rock with a naga sealed inside it has been an heirloom of his family for generations, so he was the one in a position to wake it up. In fact, he could theoretically give his powers to the archangel girl or vice versa, and she wouldn't be as good with them but she could still use them. If all supernatural beings are basically the same "species", and the lines between them are mostly drawn by humans, then that should help dissolve issues of cultural appropriation. It would also let you have villains with Combo Platter Powers derived from random assortments of entities.

If the system for using these powers is universal, then you could have the Prague school be some kind of Extranormal Institute which offers basic training in their use (albeit most of the students have pacts with far more minor entities).

edited 19th May '17 6:39:03 PM by Prime32

This might seem as controversial but there is such a thing as too much dIversity. This is coming from a black woman, even. I don't mind dIversity, it's a good thing and what you got is normal. If you end up with someone with a lot of labels tacked on them, it gets ridiculous. If you tried writing a diverse character as flat or trying too hard to pander, it ends up being a bad character. I'm guilty of the whole checkbox dIversity considering the entire 'putting an Asian in place don't belong' because of my fondness for them (not in fetishy way). And, there's a point where adding some race that usual isn't found in such a time or place as stretching the suspension of disbelief.

Regarding "too much diversity": Ultimately, I personally don't like it when an ethnic or cultural group is included purely for the sake of it. Thus, personally, I want that stuff to actually mean something for my characters.

There's also the fact I frankly sound like made up bullshit for example (French Irish Jewish German Cajun Haitian Native American who looks but isn't Hispanic), and thus doubt I could actually have characters with my same makeup. Still, Reality Is Unrealistic and full of stuff that doesn't seem real- So ultimately your problem is more "how much of an Audience-Alienating Premise is it?" rather than "Is this bad?".

No, the problem is whether it is bad. Use of lazy stereotypes makes for weak characters and tends to go with bad writing.

Including a French Irish Jewish German Cajun Haitian Native American who looks but isn't Hispanic is only a poor choice if it's written poorly or has been made a big focus in a story where ethnicity is not particularly relevant.

What Dr Whom said. Also like Editorguy said/implied, that leads to a marginalizing mentality where "X character can only exist if they're defined by being X," so say for instance, a canonically gay character can only be gay if they're defined by it in being a Gayngst-y Coming Out Story, being a walking punchline, fetishized, demonized or put on a pretentious pedestal. The straight characters can be anything/fleshed out, but the gay guy's just gay and nothing more.

The trick I've learned from Avatar and especially Korra (and I think you all know damn well why,) is to let categories like race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. be aspects rather than definers to a character to normalize and humanize them.

We're introduced to Aang clearly in Tibetan garb yet his Establishing Character Moment is wanting to go sledding and goof off like a kid on a snow day until things get serious then he shows responsibility, trickery and being a sympathetic reluctant hero. His culture's not ignored, but things like his vegetarianism only come up when it's relevant to the situation like being offered fish and his reluctance to kill due to moral reasons. The same could be said for Toph being a blind girl, Korra being a bisexual Tomboy with a Girly Streak that was temporarily wheelchair-bound and dealing with PTSD and so on.

Basically, the internal logic of the story has to support/justify why or why not which is why the "It's just fantasy" claim is just a cheap excuse to whitewash when it's not as acceptable to do the inverse ("a Black Stormtrooper/Asgardian?!?!" Nooooooo!!!") but it sounds like you got that part covered.

In my case, my story (first in a four-part series) has a supernatural parallel version of Sado Island in Japan, (which IRL is practically a mini-Siberia in isolation and coldness) having a multiracial royal family and diversity rivalling a metropolis like NYC or Los Angeles.

Why/How? Five reasons:

1. In the royal family's case, the previous Japanese monarch was a woman who was part of an international team including a Black man whom she had a daughter with who in turn, had her own heroic team where she married a White man to have 3 kids together.

2. In the population case, the established Japanese were joined by allies the current Blasian monarch had made during her global adventuring days that trust her/her family more than they trust the rest of the world such as a Moroccan-Arabic swordswoman she freed from both a curse and self-destruction in her grief over losing her family that led to using a cursed artifact to now act as a bodyguard/trainer for the monarch's eldest daughter.

3. Everyone else are refugees from a collapsed empire w/o being Mixed due to powers/abilities being genetic and are counseled to leave old grudges behind to prevent the tribalism comparable to Early-20th Century NYC and the setting starts about two generations into immigration.

4. Besides simple romance, there was a sizeable number of orphans to adopt.

And 5. There's a network of pocket dimensions to provide as many self-contained environments as possible for nearly the whole Fantasy Kitchen Sink so overcrowding's not an issue.

Thus, it's natural for the youngest White/Black/Japanese princess to be childhood friends/bandmates with a dark-skinned Filipina, (whom the former once had a crush on,) Boriqua and Native Hawaiian that works in a sushi restaurant while said Boriqua is Happily Adopted by Spanish/Venezuelan parents and dating an Indian/Turkish/Hawaiian (no relation to the previous) guy whose youngest brother also occasionally sits in with the band, does their hair and is dating the Filipina.

Again, sounds just as much as a Social Justice checklist as the Avatarverse, but the devil's in the details that if they're sitting around talking it's about as light as general topics like music or cruising around town in a jeep to as heavy as discussing/rejecting whatever original purposes they were bred for and these memories keep said princess motivated/guilt-ridden while travelling the world to fight a war that's testing her sanity.

edited 21st May '17 1:38:32 PM by K2Misfit

Generally, too much diversity happens under the following circumstances:

1. 1: it's unrealistic in your setting (IE Native American Rajput Warriors). Note that Reality Is Unrealistic, though-there actually were Arab Vikings. On a side-note, You do get Fridge Logic when you have ethnically diverse nonhumans, since by definition human races are human (a dark-skinned elf isn't "black" anymore than a black dog is "black" in the human sense). Having said that it's 100% plausible that non-humans would have variations of skin color, such as dark skin. Also a good excuse to hire more diverse actors, which is not a bad thing.

2. 2 The diversity exists only to fill quotas; such as having transsexual side characters who exist solely to say "Hi, I'm trans. See how inclusive we are? Bye."