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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9017144" data-attributes="member: 7023840">The problem with the issues re: tokenism is that this isn't the real issue. Representation matters. What most people are saying when they says, "Blergh, TOKENISM!" is that they don't understand why TEH GAYZ (or the trans, or the asexuals, or the women, or the {insert group here}) are in the show. They'll try to gussy it up ... "I don't care that the character is gay (I'm using this as a stand-in for whatever trait they are complaining about). I just HAVE TO STRONGLY COMPLAIN ALL THE TIME about how they reference the fact that the character is gay! C'mon, this is writing 101! Either you have to make it Call Me By Your Name, so I know not to watch it, but is all about the gay, or you just don't mention it because then it's TOKENISM!!11!!!!"Which ... no. That falls into the same tired idea- that all characters are either "normal" (white, hetero) and that any deviations must be justified ... or that you can just have other types of characters, which can be as good (or as bad), as fully written (or as equally ineptly written) as the characters we grew up watching!Just think about how hollow this looks if we look at the past- Uhura, for example. Sure, having a communications officers that did very little on the bridge of the Enterprise was ... wait for it ... TOKENISM ... but it was also important to see black characters (and black females) represented (cue the famous MLK anecdote). I think most people are happy having a baseline of representation ... and then we can judge all the various characters for the people that they are. I think that, overall, we are seeing this done much better - for example, I think that Jesper is definitely a breakout character in Shadow and Bone, but I don't find that the communities in question are worried about tokenism, because they are far too aware of the issue of representation; like everyone, they always want characters to be better.The struggle, as I alluded to be before, is that these characters (the so-called "Tokens") are judged by the same metrics as all the "standard" characters- as good or bad as characters. Not just because it's new. Although that's a big part of it- the trouble with almost all fanbases is that they are inherently conservative, and want to be given the same things over and over and over and over again. It's why taking the helm of a lot of these franchises can be a bit of a poisoned chalice. I'm somewhat thankful that Lindelof got removed from Star Wars.</blockquote>

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