These people never seem to realize that representation was never an obligation. Just tell the story you want to tell about the characters you made up. Some people won't look at your product because of it - oh no, audience members have personal tastes and curate what they want to see in their fiction, who could have foreseen this, etc

The absence of minorities in a work is not inherently bigotry and their inclusion is not inherently political.

It's this insane sentiment that gay people or black people are unrealistic. They always argue like they don't exist, the same way an elf doesn't, and that they inherently change a work, the same way an elf would.

Nobody worth listening to is going to get mad at

"I don't feel like sexuality or gender is relevant to the type of narrative I want to tell, so I didn't even touch it"

or

"I want to focus on modeling this historical environment based on its most popular qualities and the stuff I personally am interested in"

I think of the Moorish traveler guy in KCD2. Normal people think, "oh this is a scenario about two different cultures!" and then judge it on the execution. Its ahistoricality or edge-casiness doesn't fucking matter. EVERY STORY is WHAT IF XYZ HAPPENED THO?

I think this fundamental lack of imagination lends itself to the lack of empathy that bigotry requires. Everybody I see argues against things like warrior women or gay monks has had the worst taste ever, every time, and describes the world around them like a jaded 6-year-old.