Things I am not
Wizard
Knight in medieval times
Peasant in medieval times (though I suppose give it a few years)
Space marine
regular marine in [modern era]
marine in time before guns
Ninja (got to maintain that cover)
Medieval blacksmith
Alien whose primary concern is being 90s cool.
Shopkeeper
Merchant
Person with kids
Survivor of post apocalyptic wasteland (though again give it a few years).
City planner
Hunter gatherer in tribal times
Operator of hospital
Samurai
Giant robot
Policeman
Small animal that gets stomped easily
Small animal that gets stomped easily but is given control of robot power suit.
Small child in scary world that gets stomped easily. Technically might have been that at one point though.
Race car driver
AI bent on survival against hostile humans (hopefully give it a few years)
God type entity with ability to toy with the fundamentals of life.
Guess what I have been able to enjoy playing as in any number of games over the years? Any number of each of those. Repeat the same for all that and more for books, films, TV shows, comics, plays...
The idea that I need to be a self insert in all games, or at the very least have someone looking like me (an idealised form of me) in a mirror is ridiculous.
Tokenism is boring story writing. Most times it should be left on the cutting room floor -- if you have cut everything that does not add to the story/character or get explored in it then you probably still have some more to cut but are getting closer to being done. Likewise themes are generally universal.
See Barnum-Forer effect
The trick is give everybody a "personality test" and then send that back as the results. In a room "how many feel that generally matches you" will get a lot of agreement.
This is also to say while I have never felt any great desire to fumble genitals matching my own for fun and pleasure then I can still happily engage with a story about two such people doing love and loss in modern day, historical times, future space colony. You might get two or three "oh noes there is gays here" types but if you write such a story and nobody engages with it then it is because either your marketing failed (rare as word of mouth does well for a lot of things) or more likely you wrote a shit story so stop blaming your failures on others. Those going with the "we did not make it for you" where you is some group they imagine (whether that reflects reality or not is usually more than debatable) to be higher ranked in society are at very best limiting their work, though more like excusing it -- stories are universal or at least very much can be. The elements of storytelling might make this harder to convey in a given medium (all having their strengths and weaknesses), a common shorthand (maybe even code speak) can be a nice shortcut (though amusingly enough your shorthand might alienate the ones alone in the world you are likely to claim to want to help as they don't know it), and personal experiences harder still -- I have never had depression, I am physically quite capable, my mind and knowledge thus far in life have basically been in case
https://imgur.com/ifOmTRM happens, or if we are doing games then Factorio is my mission statement, and have a fairly serious moral code by which I operate, games can and have stripped all that away from me and got me to think like someone else which is part of their strength over other media.
I find the reverse bizarre in the extreme as well. Some claiming "that someone like me" is on screen when the world they inhabit is one full of magical creatures, ancient orders, a societal structure and moral code completely alien to any on earth (never mind the one the claimer lives in) or within any kind of living memory, oh and they have demigod like powers and are functionally immortal and at least centuries old (which itself is major break from human psychology)... OK then.
One theoretically immutable trait does not a person make either, and usually the ones to get tokenised are some of the least interesting of all.
Example of if not good character creation, one that feeds into story decisions, then a better path than most pick and one that if you follow will do you well in writing stories or analysis of the works of others.
Means, motive, opportunity... that is usually heard in the context of dealing with crimes but incentives and psychology are massive factors.
Games can be ahistorical fantasy. Gets harder when you want to claim to be realistic or at least seek the veneer of it. Something like Valkyria Chronicles being quite fine while the whole Battlefield cyborg lady on the front lines of grim and gritty world war 2 otherwise simulator... yeah (and that is not even going into the very real mission to blow up the heavy water factory and what was done there).
Trying to score brownie points from morons on the internet when you could be doing almost anything else to make your game better is also rather counterproductive, maybe not quite as bad as token multiplayer mode but up there.
Always touching 