This is really late, but since you mentioned in the first arc that the inclusion of race made you uneasy: Gangs divided upon racial lines are basically the norm in the US. In fact, Lung’s gang is weirdly diverse, in that they’re pan-asian rather than just one ethnicity.

Ah, yes. The last part was pointed out at one point in Gestation, and the first part I honestly believe I knew to some extent even then (though only on an intellectual level), but it still had me a little worried…

I think what made me uneasy at the time was that I didn’t yet know how much I could trust Wildbow, as an author, to handle the topic well. Keep in mind that at the time, the only characters with defined races were being portrayed as narrative villains.

This is actually still true, for the most part, primarily because Wildbow seems to consider their races irrelevant unless they matter to the characters’ motivations, which is something we’ve only really seen in villains so far.

Anyway, since Gestation, race hasn’t played as direct of a role, except in the form of the next gang being set up as villains, the Empire Eighty-Eight, being white supremacists. The way Wildbow handled that in Interlude 2 suggests to me that I have nothing to worry about.