Avoiding creating token characters
TSasha Smith
Posts: 27,246
in The Commons
I want diversity in my stories and art but I do not want to make token characters. I do not want to have a character just to represent a group but also I do not want all the characters to be the same.
I saw something mentioned in the Monique 7 thread about minor characters and minorities. I am trying to make a balance but not to take it too extreme.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
The one thing we lack in the world of Daz are clear-cut Latino characters. If we get those, then we might have a well rounded cast of characters. Of course, then we could fight over whether the Latino characters should be of the Carribean type (like Puerto Rico) or the Central and South American type I guess. LOL Then I suppose you can research population ethnicities and percentages of you really want to get technical and base your characters on that ;). Me? I wouldn't worry about it and just use what you want ;).
Laurie
SECOND !!
Most definetely!
So .. Don't then
Im curious as to why "diversity" matters in ones personal Fictional stories
Every one has a natural built in tribal bias towards their own cultural and even social economic demographic.
When its comes to my animated films I dont spend a single moment soul searching over wether all "groups" are repesented.
I say just tell your stories with whatever characters you personally prefer as you will never please every "group"...never !!
I once Showed some early Clips of my Marvel Comics based animated film project to a another Black person whom I have known for over eight years.
( I am Black as well ,NOT "African" - anything, Just Black.. born in Northern Virginia USA)
My "African American" Friend became a little incensed at the absence of "our people" in the Lead Character roles.
I politely directed him to the DAZ,& Maxon website And Told him feel free to Aquire the Software and SKILLS that I have and Make his own
Animated films with whatever "ethnic " Characters he desires.
I'm not sure what you consider "clear-cut Latino characters." I've been to South America, and there is an incredible diversity of skin tone, hair textures, and facial features among its peoples. I would be as hard-pressed to definitively select a Latin American from a lineup of diverse types as I would be to definitively select a citizen of the United States from the same lineup.
Also Indians (as in from India).
There have been a few, though overwhelmingly they are female.
It depends on the story you're telling, mates! One locale might be phenotypically diverse (the United States, or most any modern metropolis), where another might be pretty uniform (the Lost City of Zinj, or a Lapland village). Maybe a particular set of features is exclusive to the people of a particular region where slaveholding and slave-mongering are capital crimes, so the hero knows something's wrong when he sees those features on a youth up for sale. Or....
My take is that one's physical features, ethnic heritage, and so on are part of who each person is and help to tell their stories, but no one needs to be there "for diversity" or to round out some quota or other. Make each character unique, and make his demography a part of him, instead of him merely a part of his demography.
There's a thin line between token and representation.
Token is 'we have the engineer, the con man, the burglar, and the black guy.'
Representation is 'we have the engineer (black man), con man (mixed but dark Hispanic man), burglar (blond white woman), and the getaway driver (Australian white man).'
Token comes about when you get 'well, default/normal is white dude.'
Representation comes about when you just put people in, and don't assume white dude (and pay attention to weird 'oh hey everyone we picked happens to be a white dude')
I quite agree.
Diversity isn't tokenism - as Gene Roddenberry demonstrated, it's a way of making everything more fun.
After the Cathy Gale character was added to the Avengers TV series, the producers simply plugged her name into some of the existing scripts that were written for John Steed's male partner. The result was a far more well-rounded, intelligent, and independent female character than many male writers of the early 1960s would have possibly imagined for a female character if they tried. And quite in tune with the more liberated mood of the latter 1960s I may add.
Again, it depends on the story you're telling. I'd say it's just fine to have an ethnic or even tribal "default" if the context of the story calls for it. Any feature, including (especially!) social or vocational details, risks being "token", but what aspects of the character does the story require? If race isn't a factor but hair color is, talk about the hair. If neither one is relevant but sex is, or vocational skill-set, or an extra-vocational skill-set, then it's just fine to leave the non-factors out.
This is a rather weird take, when one sees terms like appropriation being brought up with ever other breath when someone wears a particular hairstyle, or some form of clothing, or does this just happen with black people? The truth is regardless of all the "colorblind society" talk people throw around, cultural appropriation has no meaning whatsoever unless people are at some level able to tell that a person is probably not from the culture or race they happen to be represented as.
There ARE people I can recognize at a glance as obviously being African, (as opposed to black american), Asian, and YES Latino. The fact that there are people who have Native bloodline or Hispanic ancestry and yet are indistinguishable from Caucasians is fantastic for the default crowd who don't want actual characters of color, but let's not play dumb.
* * * I will concede that this may be primarily a North American U.S. thing as I've found that American's tend to think many ethnic groups look alike even though people within those ethnic groups are easily able to tell each other apart. The thing that gets me is when they assume everybody else is equally as non-observant.
I'm not trying to play dumb. I've actually been there and I've seen incredible diversity of skin tones, hair textures, and facial features. You can check this out yourself without traveling to the Andes like I did by looking at the Latino personalities on the Latino-oriented TV network Univision: http://www.univision.com/shows
Having traveled extensively in South America, I'm well aware of the diversity of skin tones [You can find the same thing in the Middle East as well], but I've noticed that darker skinned people of these regions still tend to be discriminated aganist as well, even though these tend to be the groups people tend to think of as representing many of these regions. Just like in America, looking at television in any of these regions will give you a very false image of what a population in many of these areas look like and those are the groups that tend to fall through the cracks when thinking along the lines you're espousing.
For example you generally won't see a man that looks like this starring in telenovellas
It's also funny that when industries like Hollywood want to be use a stereotype, they suddenly have no problem finding characters that look ethnic and having worked in that industry I've heard casting directors tell people " You don't look . . . enough," or " you don't sound . . . enough."
Yet for all of the above "Diversity" we still assume all will have a "normal" BMI
Unless we toss in the lumbering Fat guy for "comic relief".
This is totally achievable by building your characters from the inside out and making sure they are well-rounded. Give them plenty of goals, motivations and conflicts. Give them hopes, dreams, quirks, strengths, weaknesses. Then they can be any race, ethnicity, etc because each started off as a whole person, not a token.
I'm really enjoying doing this in my superhero series, which is very diverse. I wanted my "Supers" to be for everyone, and I also wanted to turn race and stereotypes upside down. They come from all backgrounds and what makes them "super" has nothing to do with what color their skin is. They don't know why they are the way they are at first, only that they're not entirely human. It's actually the human race in general that gives them the most trouble. There are plenty of interracial couples among them, because they're actually all interracial to some degree.
I say this in a positive light. I am not trying to chew anyone out or shoot someone down. But I dont see why people complain that they dont have this character type or that character type when genesis characters can mix morphs to your hearts content. Grab some morphs and skins and mix away. DraagonStorm has a great script here for mixing skins too - http://www.daz3d.com/skin-blender - Zev0 has aging morphs for all ages plus wrinkles for old folk. Its not a two click solution but as you learn to mix and pick up more characters later on you simply add to the pool of what you have for greater diversity. In short, learn to roll your own!!!!!!!!! Trust me, its worth it.
Good skin for Indian girls - http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/images/241861/ - it also mixes very well in Skin blender to make a "latino" skin. THe skin for Cathy HD is based on a latino - http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/images/253071/ - Also, not that I have done a render with her skin yet but Chandra's skin is gorgeous - http://www.daz3d.com/p3d-chandra-hd-for-victoria-7
Thanks. Skin blender just went in my basket. Didn't even know this product existed.
I bought Skin Blender but haven't had a chance to use it yet. I love having more options for characters, and there are many in the store right now- tools as well as characters that give endless possibilities and really help mix things up.
Same!
This ^
Yeah, true, but if that is the line of reasoning we're going with, why do we need more morphs, or any more generic characters at all, since we arguably have the tools to spin many of these characters if someone wanted to?
The answer is CONVENIENCE. And some of us who render ethnic characters, or would like to, wouldn't mind having the same convenience as everybody else. I mean the more skills you require people to have to get what they want, you start to weed out the armchair hobbyist who just isn't going to get into it that deep, and especially not out of the box. You're requiring them to come into Daz with skills that most people don't have to worry about. You also ignore a potentially large untapped market, provided anyone even cared about trying to tap that market in the first place - which I guess only a scant few presently do.
Funny because I have heard the same thing being said about "caucasian" people, ie you cannot tell them apart. If I rememember correctly there was a big huff about some beauty pagent where the blonde girl won, caused an uproar because she wasn't of color, and that she looked very similar to the other blonde contestants. Ya know, it happens in all countries, and to all people.
I do not assume all characters have the same BMI. I am thinking of a character who is a young obese male but there is more to him that a fat comic relief. Actually he is not really meant to be a comic relief at all. I try to strive to make all characters as fleshed out as much as possible.
On one hand when I write a lot of details can be left unsaid which would be normally presented in renders. I can do enough descriptions to give a framework of the characters looks without actually declaring an official race or BMI or what not. In my writing I tend to be minimalist in character descriptions as my opinion it takes away from momentum of the story. I rather have some detail that fleshes out the character back story instead of what race he or she is. Also since my stories tend to mix science fiction and urban fantasy and time and space travel each character has their own ideas what race means. Actually a lot of the different races can pass off as human but are not. There are more than one type of vampire and it all depends if they were born vampire or made, what abilities they have or do not have and even what their reaction to Sun light is.
I am trying to think through things too but try not over think to the point nothing gets done or written. Thank you all for food for thought.
I am thinking now that if I make a character ________ how does that change anything. How does being ________ affect that character's life and people associated with them.
I got to go as my ride is almost here.
FWIW, Latino is a culture, an ethnicity, not a "race". Every "race" has a Latino component. There, I said it, now to watch the flames. >gdr<
http://www.latinpost.com/articles/115658/20160218/official-hispanic-now-race.htm
The case is Freeport v. Barrella, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Nos. 14-2270, 14-2349, 14-4287, 14-4324 and 14-3615.
I stand corrected. At least under U.S. labor laws.
I highly admire that. You don't see it very often in forums (or the internet in general).
Re: fat guy
yeah, I was thrilled at the release of George, but had to steel myself for the inevitable range of fat humor and constant background radiation of 'fat people are gross'
I mean if we want to be pedantic, "race" is an artifical construct that has no real scientific backing anyway. It exists only because enough people believe it exists (rather like money in point of fact)
Peronally I prefer talking about ethnicity, because it is more connected with culture and so can add more useful information to work with, and it doesn't have all the 19th century racist science baggage.
Mind you, for stuff like legal protections "race" is an important concept because the people discriminating absolutely belive race is real, and probamly hold some of those 19th century "scientific" ideas