BeetleManiac said:
dscross said:
My quote taken out of context becomes something it was not intended as. If you read the bottom of my post it does say exactly what you said in a different way. I was saying it would be good to write characters and plots to suit them in the correct context without shoehorning them into situations that they wouldn't be in in real life.
Then be clearer next time. Your first paragraph suggested that non-white dude characters in a war or crime game are out of place. Exactly what conclusion am I suppose to draw reading that?
I think I understood what he meant. A story can certainly be organically written with diverse characters in a way that is believable and makes sense. But it seems that more often than not, it doesn't happen that way. Instead, for example, someone writes a story about soldiers, a traditionally male-dominated group of people, throughout all of human history. So not suprisingly, the initial draft of the story is about a group of dudes doing their soldier thing. But then the writers are like, oh shit, we better put a woman in there, or we're going to get criticism, so they quickly draw up a token woman character and stick her into the story as a shield against criticism, and the result is that the token female character feels awkward and fake, i.e. shoehorned.
When a token character is present for the obvious purpose of checking a box on a list entitled How to Avoid SJW Attacks, it's pretty easy to spot, IMO. If I were of a female or minority group, I'd rather they not represent my group at all than do it in a token, shoehorned manner. But we are currently living in the shoehorn era.
