Writing a Mixed-Race MC When the "Race" is Fantasy-Based?

Personal background: I'm a white cis-gendered bi girl who has led a somewhat sheltered but not totally perfect life in the Southern US. Also, I write fantasy and horror.

So I'm most of the way through a revision on something I'm planning to submit next month. It's been through the rounds with betas and my own edits and this last pass should do it. Except I noticed two things on this round: 1) All my central characters are white, at least in my head, although I've never explicitly described them as such. (Several secondary characters are PoCs, just not my main trio.) 2) I unintentionally wrote a "coming out" speech for my MC that's about a fantasy race, not an orientation.

The thing is, this character has always been "mixed." She's part-fae, part-human, and has to deal with so-called Fantastic Racism in the fae world on account of not being "pure-blood" even though she's ridiculously talented at her own brand of magic. I've been doing some reading elseweb on the importance of fantasy stories dealing with race beyond just fantasy races, like people who come from fictional cultures and backgrounds that don't exist in the real world. I guess my question is should I go ahead and make her mixed-race and explicitly describe her as darker-skinned, or would that be shoehorning at this point? Her family background is an issue for her, that's already part of the story--her trying to find a place where she belongs when neither world feels like a perfect fit. That's probably where the unintentional coming-out speech came from, actually, since I often feel like I'm not queer enough to belong in LGBT circles, but also not straight enough to feel comfortable anywhere else. The speech in my novel involves her "coming out" as fae to her human best friend, who has always suspected something was "different" about her but didn't know what.

Am I overthinking this? Is this a bad idea? Is it possible I'm finding another reason not to submit yet, which always seems to be an issue for me when I have something I'm 99% sure is submission-ready but then I go back and think, "Wait, this other thing! I must do this other thing to it or it will be RUINED!"

I mean "shoehorning" as in "trying to make something fit that really doesn't," but I think it probably does, and I don't know whether I should have someone else look at to confirm that for me or what. Again, I suspect I'm overthinking it.

The thing holding me back is this mix of wanting to have a diverse cast, but not having them be representative of me as a queer person because it's too scary, but also not wanting to step on someone else's representation, because that would be appropriation. Except I'm not even sure that's what I'm doing. I don't think so?

bunny-gypsy said:

What do you mean, "not queer enough"?

Click to expand...

This article sums it up pretty well, actually.

Thanks for replying. I believe I've written a fully 3-dimensional, flawed, self-doubting but proactive character, so I'm probably okay going with what I have.