"It's so hard being white and twenty-something."

[mcity]

Assassin's Creed 2 EP1: The Life and Times of Desmond Miles - Spoiler Warning - Youtube

Spoiler Warning, in the video above, is mocking Ubisoft for making the protagonist Assassin's Creed a twenty-something white guy so most of their target audience can identify with him.

Funny thing; minority video game/comic fans say there aren't enough minorities to identify with all the time. Problem is, if you need someone to be like you to identify with them, wouldn't it be impossible for the white people to identify with anyone not-white, or cisgendered to identify with non-cis, or men to identify with women? Because I think we all know that doesn't happen. And even if it did, what makes the identification of the minority in question a greater priority than that of the majority? We're supposed to be equal here, right?

I'm not saying that it isn't a good idea to have minority characters. I'm just saying the "minority readers need to identify with them" is a terrible, terrible reason to do so. Superman is a white-collar white American with superpowers, and he is the world's most recognizable superhero. He's better known than Jesus Christ. Most of the world is not white, white-collar, American, or superpowered. As a general rule, if you can't identify with a character, and it's by accident, you have a case of plain old bad writing on your hands, not underrepresentation.

Comments

[degraine.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say that if you can't identify with a character - and it isn't intentional - that it is bad writing... (I think I have all the tenses right there)

Just as you can't please everyone all the time, so you can't write characters that everyone will 'identify with', unquestionably.