Thread by @KurtBusiek

Still thinking about this, at least a little, because it’s just so daffy.

“It’s not about adding diversity for the sake of diversity, it’s about subtracting homogeneity for the sake of realism.”

The guy who argued against this statement went on to argue that it should be...

…a matter of merit, not ethnicity or gender or whatever, that determines how the cast is built.

And I’m just gobsmacked at the idea that he seems to think writers interview a bunch of applicants in order to build the cast for a story.

When I started writing AVENGERS, the superheroes on the roster were all white, because we wanted a “classic cast,” and due to the fact that most of Marvel’s classic characters come from an era when almost all superheroes were white (and they haven’t aged out yet), that’s how...

…things shook out.

There were other ways we could have gone, but I thought, “Let’s go with an all-white team and then make that into a story issue.”

But also, I gave them a new federal liaison, and he was black. And we introduced new non-white characters.

Now, my sock-puppet friend may think that the liaison job should have gone to the applicant with the most merit. I’d argue that it did, because I made him up.

I didn’t choose him from a pool. I made up a qualified, capable liaison, and I made him a black man.

Why?

Because “it’s not about adding diversity for the sake of diversity, it’s about subtracting homogeneity for the sake of realism.”

We had plenty of white men in the book, and women, too. It would be useful to have some back faces.

So we made the new guy black.

That’s something writers do.

We don’t hire the characters, we make them up. We build the worlds, we staff the books. And making the world look like a modern, credible one (if that’s the kind of story we’re writing) is worth doing.

We make it up, and the choices matter.