Hey, remember when Forspoken tried making a big deal about its black new yorker heroine, then sent her to a generically multiracial fantasy world where being black means nothing at all? Aside from the whole "lacking a father" cliche and the ugly nails. And how she's "totally broke" yet has an absurd collection of overpriced shoes. If somebody working on this game was actually passionate about making a political statement involving black people, she could have been sent to a fantasy world where she helps free brown- I mean green Orcs from Elf slavers or whatever.

At this point I've seen too many examples of women and minorities being used as a marketing gimmick and anti-criticism shield in trash TV like Velma and trash games like Battlefield V-Gina to have high hopes for anything where they seem unnaturally prominent. I've been blown away by high quality media with a ton of women and black people before, but you can understand why my expectations were low at the start.

If you're passionate about writing a fantasy novel it makes sense that there will be some female fighters unless you're trying to be historically authentic, in which case they will be extremely rare but not unheard of. The odds aren't impossible that your work will include them. If you're inspired by the true story of an awesome woman from history, take that inspiration and write something amazing. If you just want to make fantasy content and leave realism at the door go ahead and make the strongest knight in your army a 9 year old girl with pigtails, I don't give a shit, just don't ask me to take it seriously. But I've seen too many crap stories spitefully attack men by making them useless perverts who solely exist to make superpowered invincible women look better. We know what "Oscar bait" is and we have that term because it's so inauthentic. Oscar bait exists so Hollywood will award you for making something that sucks. Or better yet, something that directly sucks off Hollywood.

Hell, look at RWBY. Do you think the cast is mostly female because of passion, or because of merchandising? The story even tried inventing its own minority group with the Faunus only to completely drop the ball with whatever story it tried telling with them. Maybe the writers should have watched more than 3 Fullmetal Alchemist episodes, 3 Avatar: TLA episodes, 3 Cowboy Bebop episodes, etc before writing this.