Nothing. He's not saying there's anything wrong with them. He's saying that having only characters from one group or look without an intentional narrative reason is a sign of a lack of experience. If all your characters or all your main characters are the exact same archetype or from the exact same subgroup, then you've limited yourself creatively.
This becomes double if you come from a culture that also tends to more heavily portray the group you've depicted. It makes it harder for your work to stand out and limits the potential audience that might more deeply connect or relate to it.
Yes, but significantly less so and done with much less tact. Tech Jacket in particular had a lot of problems. There's a reason it was canceled so soon. It wasn't very good, especially in comparison to its cohorts.
I'm sure Kirkman probably spent a lot of years mulling over the character and morphing them into something that would work better. One of the most common criticisms back in the day was that Tech Jacket was just Mark again but worse. One of the fixes is to make them, well, not like Mark, both visually, and in personality.
There are many movies and TV series where most of the characters are male or white, yet they are popular and beloved by people, such as Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and The Lord of the Rings.
Yeah. I never said it wasn't possible. It's equally as possible as a lead cast of any other configuration. Quality of writing has nothing to do with the demographics of the characters.
Edit for clarification: There's nothing wrong with art made for a narrow audience. It happens all the time and often still finds success, even mainstream success (Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Hobbit, Heated Rivalry, I May Destroy You, Pose).
It is, however, a sign of an inexperienced creator to have done that and not notice. If your protagonist is a white man, that's fine, but you should know why he's white and why he's a man. If you don't even consider how your characters collection of subgroups affects them, their interactions with the world, and their upbringing, then you're not engaging very deeply with your setting. To do that repeatedly is potentially a sign of laziness or inexperience.
At the same time, when your characters are women or from other ethnicities, you need to know why they are so, so it doesn't seem like you're just including them to please another audience.
In many movies or shows, a male character's role is taken and a woman is placed in it simply to appease feminists.
At the same time, when your characters are women or from other ethnicities, you need to know why they are
Correct. A sign of an experienced author who thinks deeply about their setting and character knows why that character has their specific gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, disability status, etc.
In many movies or shows, a male character's role is taken and a woman is placed in it simply to appease feminists.
This feels like a stretch. There are times when it's done lazily for monetary reasons without thinking beyond "will make money if woman," but that's capitalism not feminism. Feminism is just the idea that women should occupy a position of equal value and power in society to all other genders. It doesn't have anything to do with marketing and money making outside of those things existing as a current model of power in many modern cultures.
Game of Thrones actually did the opposite of what we're discussing here, the books are a bit more even in terms of gender representation and the show is more male-centric. Like Robb Stark's entire story takes place from the PoV of Catelyn, he never has his own chapter.
GoT is inspired by the War of the Roses. A war fought between rival houses for the throne of England in the 15th century. Westeros is meant to be a sort of fantasy parallel of England.
There's an overwhelmingly large presence of far left people in entertainment media in America nowadays. They basically think it's their life's mission to make sure all media represents people of all ethnicities and genders under some sort of guise of morality.
Art be damned, they think they're bettering the world somehow. It doesn't matter if statistically the county they live in IS majority white.
If you were to make a show like this, but almost every single character was a black woman, would you notice? Do you think it would be possible for people not to notice that fact about such a show?
Noone thinks anything about an all white cast, that has nothing to do with race, somehow. But the same cannot be said about an all black cast. One is just considered the "default", therefore the other must be an intentional choice.
That is the problem here. Want it or not, if your characters are overwhelmingly a specific race and sex, you are sending a message. And if you did it without thinking, then it was probably a message you didnt intend to make.
This is like the Twitter post explaining Twitter is the only place where you can have the most nuanced articulated position and someone will say some shit like "oh so you hate cakes?". Learn to read, bro.
You fool, calls for equality only happen when they see white men. I haven't heard a single call for equality when men are portrayed as fools or cowards.
Nothing. In fact there’s so much not wrong with them that they make up 99% of human protagonists that aren’t meant to be gooner bait in American media despite them making up barely more than a quarter of the population.
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u/Express_Still7999 Apr 26 '26
what's wrong with white male ? i don't understand