As an author, a artist, and a game designed, here's one of the most important things I've ever learned about characters:

They're mostly empty holes, held together with just enough substance that you can tell something's there.

A novel or a TV show or a game will tell you some things a character is, but there are HUGE gaps meant to be filled in by viewer assumption.

That's a feature. It means creators don't have to waste you time detailing They were born. They have ten fingers and nine toes, etc."

But the ability to fill in those gaps depends heavily on a shared background.

If I say "Imagine a stately sovereign," you'll have very different assumptions depending on if you grew up in Western Europe vs Subsaharan Africa vs East Asia.

None of those variant cultural assumptions are wrong, and without the creator filling in more detail you can't necessarily claim any specific interpretation is "correct."

But we want to believe fiction is a truthful accounting of real events. Our brains are wired to believe.

That's why, fore example, you can create a character named "Cho Chang" and not say anything about her except that she's from Ireland, and then hordes of fans will be upset when you cast a girl of Chinese decent.

They heard "Ireland" and filled in the gaps to mean "white."

The problem with fictional characters being mostly gaps is that most people will fill those gaps in with what's most ubiquitous. In the US or the UK, that generally means straight, white, cis, able, and neurotypical.

Sometimes the desire to insert defaults is so strong you'll ignore material that's there, like the surname "Chang."

When you're a minority, how you fill in these gaps is a little different. You've been taught to ASSUME the majority, but you also see familiar elements that make you think or people like yourself. So sometimes you fill in those gaps in ways that are familiar to you.

And when you say that, it makes upsets some insecure fans. How dare you "lie" about X character, even though their truth is an assumption.

This can go hand-in-hand with subtle (or overt) bigotry. Majority people believe "minority = bad," & think you're insulting the character

To boil down a specific example: You often see fanbases react in outrage when a trans person headcannons a character as transgender. Trans people can develop a lot of lovable quirks as coping mechanisms, and they identify with fictional characters who share those traits.

But the truth of the matter is that creators almost NEVER explicitly state a character's sex assigned at birth.

MOST CISGENDER CHARACTERS ARE HEADCANNONS.

But because that's the majority, no proof is required. It's assumed to be the truth.

Minority creators know how hard it is to balance the need to say "this character isn't the majority" with the risk of being accused of "forcing your agenda."

You don't want to say "of COURSE this character is black," but you know that if you don't, they'll be read as white.

Like I said: Sometimes the desire to make a character we read "like us" is so strong that readers ignore obvious statements indicating a character is a minority.

I've explicitly written trans characters that fans have bent over backs to explain TO ME how they're not REALLY trans

I don't really have a conclusion to this lesson, except to say that I hope it makes you more aware of the gaps that make up your favorite characters, how you fill them in, and how you react to how others fill them in.