When I was nominated to Change the World, it really resonated, because, even if the focus of the story is on a few characters, changing the world is explicitly a theme in Project Quintessence. How would human culture change if the laws of physics did? What would someone from a more peaceful world think of ours? Would a person who changed the world involuntarily have a responsibility to consciously influence the direction of the change?
There is a lot of unintentional prejudice in this world, a casual failure to think about groups of people whose existence is too easily ignored. That’s why increasing the visibility of people who are different is so important, both in reality and in fiction.
To be honest, including diverse characters in my fiction hardly takes much effort; it seems to be something I just do naturally, especially when it comes to gender and sexuality. (Actually, I think that Project Quintessence has more LGBT characters than it would if the characters’ traits were chosen to fit some quota.) But I am paying attention to how I handle it.
Bisexual people are still underrepresented in fiction. Polyamory is so rarely discussed that my spell checker doesn’t recognize the word. And you practically never see an intersex character in anything that doesn’t revolve around them being intersex. Maybe it’s ego, but I would like to think that including these kinds of characters in fiction might in some small way improve the situation of someone in real life.
I also strongly agree with what Jay Dee Archer, who nominated me, said about education and science. I’ve had this idea for a couple of weeks now for a new regular feature on this blog that uses examples from popular culture to discuss science, and I think I’m ready to say that I’ll be doing it.
What can you do to change the world? Join this project to help encourage others to do the right thing and make the world a better place to live. Write a blog post about what you do or could do to help your community, country, or other people become better. If you need some ideas, you can find some on the Change the World project’s main page. When you have finished, please nominate at least one other blogger to answer this challenge and link to their blog. Also, please link back to the person who challenged you. Include this text in your blog post. You are under no obligation to take part in this. Thank you, and have a wonderful day!
I nominate:
And here is the blog of the person who nominated me.
On the Edge of Enlightenment 
Nice idea. In my writing, it’s quite international. Men and women are completely equal. LGBT hasn’t come up yet, though. I’m sure it will.
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