: Re: How to balance respecting diversity and avoiding tokenism at the same time My project has an environmental theme. My characters eat meals, and because of the setting, this includes meat and

@Welton431

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A few notes you may or may not want to bear in mind.

First, the 'token character' is just that, a token, not a character. They have no personality, no character, no history, nothing. They are just there to be there, to say you have someone like that to represent the group you feel uncomfortable (or not confident) writing. (Basically what Jay already said about that)

Second, 'environmental' and 'vegetarian' aren't synonymous. I'm a vegetarian. Born and raised. I'm not super concerned about the environment, because being a vegetarian is about what I eat, not what I think about it. My gf is vegan, and she is politically active, trying to help the environment. If you start going into 'vegetarian=environmentally friendly', then you'll have vegans frothing at the mouth, because "vegetarians still eat cheese and that's so bad for cows. And don't get me started on the poor chickens laying their eggs." Is that really a path you want to wander?

Third, making the villain a meat-eater? That's basically just making this a propaganda piece. Now, listen to the difference: "making the villain a meat-eater" versus "the villain eats meat". If the good guy is a vegetarian (or vegan), and the villain eats meat, then you're going to be creating more of a headache than not catering to the vegetarians.

While it would be nice if there were more vegetarian representation (me being a vegetarian and all), it isn't quite the point to make all non-vegetarians the 'bad guy'. That's like me writing a novel where all the good guys are gay and the bad guy's this straight cis-hetero white guy frothing at the mouth every time he sees the good guys hugging in public. (which, btw, is called queer-coding the bad guy if the reverse is true)

So, I would say: don't go down that road. It's a slippery slope, and one you'll find yourself being criticised for every decision made. Unless you have one of the good guys listening to all the reasons why eating meat is bad ("it takes three times more land for raising cattle", "Oh really? I didn't know that. Well, I still love me my hamburgers. So, yeah."), in which case you will tap into "God, vegetarians are so preachy!" and still upset someone.

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