#token character

[elihinze]

Fantasy books nowadays are starting to look a little bit like college brochures or McDonald’sadvertisements. You know the ones. The overwhelmingly white, able-bodied ones with an Asian/Middle Eastern/black/Latin/gay/disabled/heavy-set person thrown in.

There are a few problems with that. More diversity is great and very much needed, especially in the fantasy genre–but how many authors handle these characters is what disappoints me.

READ MORE ON THE BLOG.

[jets-break-the-soundbarrier]

See in my story, you have the token straight white male.

[everydayprotagonist-blog]

Token Minority

Within in our heavily Asian-populated group, even we have token characters.

Played straight with Tim. The white guy in a group, and a hockey fanatic. Whenever he's with his other hockey fanatic friend, Tylor, they become the two white guys.

Subverted with Cassandra. Everything about her looks white, except she's half Filipino. The other half is french.

Also subverted with Reyes, who we jokingly call our black token friend. It's even funnier when people innocently mistaken him to be black. He's just Filipino.