A PoC Scion please? There is so much untapped potential here.

[Amnmaat]

As a gay guy I've never felt that a setting is 'wrong' just because it happens to lack gay characters. I'd rather not be treated like a token for businesses to score points with.

Being gay is not something that can be explicitly shown. For all we know every main story character is gay.

Many businesses censor such things in certain countries yet these big businesses never seem to speak out against it or prevent it from happening. It's almost as if they just pay lip service and say/do whatever will score them more profit in each region.

I also don't believe a character is inherently more interesting just because they happen to boast a certain skin tone or sexuality. I also think there's a genuine risk that a story can be cheapened by obsessing over representation. I'm more in favour of letting writers create the characters that they want to see rather than those that will fulfil a quota.

You're comparing apples to oranges. LGBT and skin color are 2 vastly different categories.

Don't forget, I'm commenting about other people making this a big deal.

Other people? As far as i can see the only ones making it a big deal are those against asking for dark skin people in the main story or the other quests in general.

[Vesuvias]

Personally I think that race or skin color are pointless things to bring up and point out in conversation. They are literally traits that IRL are skin deep... who cares if you have more or less melanin in your skin then me? Underneath all that skin is the same muscles and bones we all have so why does it matter at the end of the day?

[Packetdancer]

Let's say the developers cave in to the requests and make a black scion. Well, that won't be enough, because why are there still mostly "white" characters? We need more colored (not white) scions because why should there be majority white (Asian that looks white, non specified because it doesn't matter to the Japanese) ones? We need to change it to at least half.

My point was more that representation should ideally be unconscious. People shouldn't have to ask where the gay folks, or the black folks, or anyone else are, because the world should feel diverse enough that the question never arises. Yes, it sucks that people have to consciously try for diversity and inclusion. It sucks that usually when they do try, it comes across as pandering or tokenizing something... or on some occasions, downright offensive in playing to cliche and stereotype.

The whole dang situation sucks.

But that's why I think it's better not to think "oh, well, this next character we make for this TV show/story/game/whatever should be <X> because we don't have enough of that"—which leads to forced token characters at best, and cliches that can be borderline offensive at worst—but rather "why does this character have to be straight, white, etc."

Think of Leverage. (Really, more people should; it's one of the best television shows ever made, and no one will convince me otherwise.) The character of Alec Hardison is, to put it mildly, a nerd. He plays video games. He makes Doctor Who and Star Trek references. He knows computers and tech inside and out, and he gets positively gleeful when you give him new shiny tech to play with. He's also unquestionably the most gentle and caring of the Leverage team.

He's also black.

The fact that Hardison is black isn't the most important part of his character, mind you; it's not his defining trait by any stretch of the imagination. He's not a character who was put in for representation because he was black; he's a character who, so far as I know, happens to be black because the best actor for the role was. And honestly, I think that makes him a far better character than if he was thrown in just for representation. Because it doesn't feel like they thought "Oh, we should make one of the characters black", but rather when Aldis Hodge auditioned for the character, they asked "Is there any reason this character should be white?" And the answer was no. So he was not.

Is the fact that Alec Hardison is black important to the storyline? Not usually, no. Is the fact that Alec Hardison is played by Aldis Hodge, who is black, important to some of the viewers? Yes, most definitely.

That sort of representation is, I think, far more natural and less forced.

So for my part, if I had my way, I wouldn't say "you need to make more black characters in the world" to the devs. I would say, "Next time you introduce a major character, just ask yourself if there's a reason they specifically need to be fair-skinned. And if not? Maybe consider a different shade." They need change nothing else about what they intend for the character.

Because I think everything is a little better off if we don't just assume every character is straight and white by default, and only deviate if we consciously decide we need to force something else in.

But, again, nothing we say on the English forum for a Japanese video game—much less in what we all agree started as a troll thread—is likely to impact the storytelling significantly. So it's sort of a moot point.

[Wilford111]

...

Again, you bring up some great points! I agree with everything you said here, except for one thing. Mainly, I don't believe writers or concept artists should give any second thoughts about what race their character will be. Anything more than what they have in their mind's eye is probably too much if you ask me. The artist has their vision for their character, and I don't want to mess with that.

Similarly to how white artists' characters are mostly white, and black artists' characters are mostly black, I don't see a problem with Japanese artists creating characters that are most likely extensions of themselves.

[Iscah]

For comparison's sake, this is what I mean with the Ecuador Line.

Thankyou for the backup on the map discussion, but I need to nitpick terminology.

That line is the Equator, so called because it divides the globe into equal halves.

Ecuador derives its name from being on the Equator, but the line is not named after it.

[Wilford111]

To clarify: I'm not saying characters should just match whatever their creator's race is. I'm saying creators should make characters that come naturally to them, not adhere to any sort of social codes. Most characters are extensions of their artist's selves and personalities, which is why most of them tend to match their creator's race.

[Packetdancer]

Again, you bring up some great points! I agree with everything you said here, except for one thing. Mainly, I don't believe writers or concept artists should give any second thoughts about what race their character will be. Anything more than what they have in their mind's eye is probably too much if you ask me. The artist has their vision for their character, and I don't want to mess with that.

I mean, yes? They shouldn't force a character into an unnatural position. But frequently, what our characters default to is dictated by unconscious bias. And the only way to break out of unconscious bias is to push against it a little.

You say that black creators usually create black characters, but interestingly, that isn't actually true. Unconscious bias that the default is 'white' is prevalent outside of white creators as well! There's an interview somewhere with the late (and much-missed) Dwayne McDuffie where he mentions that he created his black characters like Virgil Hawkins ("Static") with intent, because even he struggled against the 'default is white' unconscious bias. And this is someone who felt all his life that black people were underrepresented in superhero comics (or else borderline cliche and sometimes offensive).

And you can find similar interviews with others.

Kamala Khan—honestly, one of Marvel's best superheroes, so far as I'm concerned—was similarly created with intent. One of her creators, Sana Amanat, is Pakistani and drew from her own cultural heritage and her experiences growing up as an immigrant... but she certainly didn't do so just by default. (And her TED Talk about the comic is actually really good.)

The fact that straight and white is the 'default' can be traced to all the media—books, comics, television, movies, etc.—with characters that were predominantly straight and white. When that's always presented as the default, you unconsciously come to see it as such. And unless that changes, that unconscious bias will continue to propagate through that entertainment into future generations.

I look forward to the day when people don't need to ask themselves that "does this character need to be white?" question now and then. But until then, unless they do, unconscious bias means 'straight and white' will probably be the default even among non-white creators. At least in places where American or western entertainment has an impact.

But honestly, I've probably expended enough words here, even by my exceptionally wordy standards; I'll just leave it at that, and try to take my leave from the thread again.

[Amnmaat]

To get back on topic. From a Marketing perspective (I've worked in Marketing and Operations as a manager); square enix is losing out in terms of profit by only including light skin characters in the game's msq and media. It would behoove them to change that if they do want more profit, whether they do or not is down to art, but the marketing department should do their job and pressure them to do things which would bring more money such as adding more dark skin characters to the game's story.

[Theodric]

I'd rather not see skin tone used as a commodity for cheap point scoring.

[Nothv13]

To get back on topic. From a Marketing perspective (I've worked in Marketing and Operations as a manager); square enix is losing out in terms of profit by only including light skin characters in the game's msq and media. It would behoove them to change that if they do want more profit, whether they do or not is down to art, but the marketing department should do their job and pressure them to do things which would bring more money such as adding more dark skin characters to the game's story.

I believe this worked out so well, a term was coined for it, "Get woke, go broke"

I also find it interesting you seem to be perfectly fine with race being treated like a commodity which lead sto things like tokenism.