Interesting discussion about Paris. I read the novelization before I saw VOY's pilot, or all of the pilot (my memory is shaky about that now), and I thought Paris was set up to be an interesting character, a bit mercenary. But he did become somewhat bland over time, but there was a kind of smothering blandness to many of the VOY characters. And some of that blandness, when it comes to the Maquis characters, could also be considered character growth as they integrated into a Starfleet crew, for the first or second time.
In the Trek comic, Paris has largely been useless, though it's like the writers have remembered he was onboard the last two issues, and maybe they will expand his role as the story goes on. I'm not much of a fan of the legacy characters they've put on the Theseus to back up Sisko already (it feels too gimmicky and I wish they had gone with lesser known legacy characters if they had to use legacy characters at all), and Paris hasn't done much to stand out to me so far.
As for the discussion about white male characters as the default, the perspectives here are interesting. I am not a white male, and the way I see it is that white male characters are generally not bland or generic, and when they are, they could be considered an "everyman" that the audience still identifies with. No matter if an everyman or not, I do find that in much of entertainment, white male characters are the main characters that the audience identifies with or are supposed to, as well as root for. And with so many mainstream/Hollywood creatives and suits being white males, I get why white males are often the default. I see Hollywood/entertainment struggling much more to create interesting, three-dimensional non-white characters (especially in lead roles). White characters (especially white male characters) are just so baked into our entertainment/imagination, that seeing someone different in lead roles instantly starts internet storms brewing.
Some of the triggered feel that if white males are not the leads from jump, then there's some nefarious "identity politics", "woke", or "forced diversity" agenda at work, and decry all the "politics" that all of a sudden just spoiled entertainment, while rarely, if ever questioning, that the idea of the omnipresent/default white (male) character itself might be an identity politics statement.
In the Trek comic, Paris has largely been useless, though it's like the writers have remembered he was onboard the last two issues, and maybe they will expand his role as the story goes on. I'm not much of a fan of the legacy characters they've put on the Theseus to back up Sisko already (it feels too gimmicky and I wish they had gone with lesser known legacy characters if they had to use legacy characters at all), and Paris hasn't done much to stand out to me so far.
As for the discussion about white male characters as the default, the perspectives here are interesting. I am not a white male, and the way I see it is that white male characters are generally not bland or generic, and when they are, they could be considered an "everyman" that the audience still identifies with. No matter if an everyman or not, I do find that in much of entertainment, white male characters are the main characters that the audience identifies with or are supposed to, as well as root for. And with so many mainstream/Hollywood creatives and suits being white males, I get why white males are often the default. I see Hollywood/entertainment struggling much more to create interesting, three-dimensional non-white characters (especially in lead roles). White characters (especially white male characters) are just so baked into our entertainment/imagination, that seeing someone different in lead roles instantly starts internet storms brewing.
Some of the triggered feel that if white males are not the leads from jump, then there's some nefarious "identity politics", "woke", or "forced diversity" agenda at work, and decry all the "politics" that all of a sudden just spoiled entertainment, while rarely, if ever questioning, that the idea of the omnipresent/default white (male) character itself might be an identity politics statement.
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