When it comes to storytelling, no one hates diversity. People might say they hate diversity, but what they’re talking about is something completely different. Here’s why.

People Hate The “Cut and Paste”

When big companies feel the need to hit a diversity market, a lot of the time — especially when doing a remake — they’ll simply copy and paste a character of the diversity they’re trying to market towards. Take the notoriously panned Little Mermaid remake, which simply takes Ariel and makes her black. The issue isn’t that Ariel was once white — the issue is that it’s literally the same story, with no alterations (in fact, its arguably more boring) other than the fact that her skin tone just got flipped.

Blackness is not just a switch you turn on and off with the selection of an actor. It is a culture, something that is intricate and when used well can be a great boon to the writer. If you want an opposite example, look at the Spiderverse series — the introduction of Miles Morales as a lead Spiderman figure [1] was widely praised because they fit more or less the entire story to fit around this frame (ditto with the many other colorful Spiderman variants introduced in that story).

Let’s talk a little more about how this boon can be used.

Viewers Like Diversity When It Feels New

Imagine a horror movie where the main character is a girl in a wheelchair.

The movie’s story would likely be panned if the girl acted in the exact same way as every other horror protagonist other than that she occasionally mentioned the fact she was a girl or was in a wheelchair. People might even say that the movie was simply pandering to the “female gender” or “disableds”, and thus invoke a firestorm on social media.

BUT, imagine things this way: that the character’s disability presents a unique challenge to her role in the story. That, being in a wheelchair, she does not have the same maneuverability as other protagonists and thus is especially vulnerable to threat. Perhaps she devises a clever way to get around these vulnerabilities, and still ends up on top. Perhaps her womanly characteristics, her female upbringing, causes her to think in ways that the generic white male protagonist would not, and cause her to “solve” the horror problem in a way audiences haven’t really seen before.

Something tells me this story wouldn’t be getting the same backlash.

You see, the benefit to diversity for writers is that it opens a pandora’s box of perspectives, tropes, and narratives that really haven’t been seen in the past due to mostly silly social considerations. There are thousands, if not millions, of combinations that if done can lead to brand new stories that have NEVER been seen before! So why waste it on just making the same exact character with a couple of diversity switches enabled? Why not utilize these new switches to do something brand new?

When audiences are introduced to this well-written, carefully thought out style of diversity, some interesting things happen. The first is that people love it. The second is that all that supposed “racist backlash” — beyond a few nutcases here and there — completely goes away.

No, It’s Not A Racism Thing

Big companies will often try to gaslight audiences when their films aren’t doing well. Believe it or not, this has become a big reason why companies do write in diverse characters — it’s a kill switch so that, if reviewers say the movie is bad, you can simply call the reviewer racist! Can you believe I can just switch my Generic White Male Protag into a Generic White Gay Male Protag, then unlock millions of dollars in Gay Revenue while also calling all my enemies homophobic? Wow, it’s that easy!

I think a big reason why fans of games or films get stuck down the right-wing rabbit hole is for exactly this reason: they confuse diversity for bad writing, and right-wingers cling onto that fact as a propaganda piece. “No no, The Little Mermaid film wasn’t bad because its terrible boring shlock, its bad because they turned a white character into a black character! Yes, that’s it!”. This is the dialog they hear from conservative pundits on one side, and on the other side they of course hear people calling them racist. Easy to miss the forest for the trees here.

But, as I’ve already hinted at, this doesn’t explain the wide majority of diverse works that do well. How come everyone complained that they made Ariel black, but no one complained about them making Spiderman black [2]? Why does everyone complain about Chinese companies taking pieces of games like League of Legends, but no one complains about Black Myth Wu Kong?

Here’s the simple answer: On an aesthetic level, The Little Mermaid and League of Legends are of poorer quality to Spiderverse and Wu Kong. And it’s quality that most people really care about.

The Work Still Has To Be Good!

So this brings me to my conclusion: the work still has to be good. Good writing, good sound, good style — depending on the medium, whatever the traditional aspects of a high quality work are.

Now that the conversation wraps all the way around back to quality, our solution seems obvious. Good writing requires the creation of smart characters, so a good story with diverse characters would never suffer from this problem. If the story is bad, companies would rather have the internet in arms over social arguments rather than take any responsibility.

Be careful and think the next time controversy comes around.

[1] Since I bring it up throughout the article: I’m aware that Miles Morales technically isn’t Spiderman. But since most of the audience doesn’t know Spiderman lore enough to know this distinction, most will just see him as “Spiderman but they made him black”, which means it serves well for these examples.

[2] “No one” is a bit of poetic liberty here. Obviously real racists still exist, but its funny to see the discourse drop from 80% of the conversation with Little Mermaid and 2% of the conversation with Spiderverse.

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