pixel skylines
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
Three Goblin Art
DEAR READER
ellievsbear
d e v o n
Kaledo Art
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
Peter Solarz
$LAYYYTER
YOU ARE THE REASON
Game of Thrones Daily
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
will byers stan first human second
we're not kids anymore.
blake kathryn
Sade Olutola
styofa doing anything
Show & Tell
Jules of Nature
seen from Germany
seen from Germany
seen from Kazakhstan
seen from United States
seen from Greece
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Libya
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Iraq
seen from Spain
seen from Portugal
seen from Japan
@clocksmos
this new trend of “what if the bad guys won” as the plot of upcoming tv shows is so…. transparent in a way because it truly feels like it’s less about exploring the possibility of an alternative reality and more about white supremacists rewriting history to turn their defeats into victories in order to make their racist fantasies come to life but das just my hot take and i don’t watch tv so
Male Protagonists to Avoid in your Writing: An Illustrated Guide.
1. The Edward Cullen (i.e. the glorified stalker)
How to spot him:
He’s gorgeous. Brooding. Bejeweled with countless sequins. He stresses over and over again that he and the female protagonist have a “connection,” are “soulmates,” or something else that you’d generally expect to hear from that one creepy kid who used to stare at you in class. Similarly, in true creep fashion, he uses their supposed connection as an excuse to blatantly stalk her, and is narratively treated as nothing short of a romantic in spite of it because he’s attractive (and sparkly) enough to pull it off.
Examples:
In the Twilight Saga, Edward is canonically over one hundred years old, making it extra creepy that he’s A) hanging around a high school for no particular reason, and B) dating a seventeen-year-old girl. He uses derogatory terms about past lovers, attempts suicide when Bella tries to break up with him, and shows up at her home uninvited to watch her sleep. Moreover, his systematic isolation of Bella from her friends and family is all-too reminiscent of real life abusive dynamics.
How to avoid him:
Read up on signs of abuse in a relationship. This is a good thing to do anyway as a means of self-education, but it’s also important for writers who plan to include romantic subplots. A good one to start with can be found here, at least in terms of emotional abuse: https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2014/10/13/21-warning-signs-of-an-emotionally-abusive-relationship/.
Try to avoid a blatant power imbalance. Edward is stressed to be older, stronger, more experienced, and more intelligent than Bella. Sometimes power imbalances are unavoidable due to species differences, but this can be countermanded by giving the human love interest qualities that make them valuable in other ways.
Overall, if you’re attempting to portray a healthy relationship, try to base it on an equal exchange of power and mutual respect.
2. The Christian Grey (i.e. the glorified rapist)
How to spot him:
When I first found out that the 50 Shades of Grey franchise was originally Twilight fanfiction, I initially (incorrectly) presumed it to be a joke. After I’d come to terms with the fact that it was not, my next thought was that it made perfect sense, because Christian is literally Edward Junior on steroids: the same abusive brand of stalker who gets off on a blatant power imbalance, with the added unpleasantries of excessive wealth and bad BDSM etiquette. Oh, yeah. And he’s a rapist.
Examples:
Christian disregards Ana’s request for a condom, stating “her body belongs to him,” threatens punishment when she refutes his attempts to discretely grope her in public, and at one point, ignores her safe word. Throughout the book, Ana is pressured into sex she feels uncomfortable with.
How to avoid him:
If you’re going to write about BDSM, actually study BDSM etiquette.
Healthy BDSM relationships are forged on mutual trust and a consensual, mutually beneficial exchange of power. Even if you are writing about BDSM, if you intend to write about a healthy relationship, be sure to base it off of these values.
Just because a character is dominant doesn’t mean they need to be emotionally callous; Christian completely neglects Ana’s emotional needs, such as her aftercare (i.e. the period of tenderness recommended after BDSM sessions to compensate for the emotional and physically taxing task of surrendering one’s power.)
In short, don’t use kink as a means of excusing emotionally unhealthy and abusive dynamics.
3. The Ross Geller (i.e. the entitled “nice guy”)
How to spot him:
He thinks his hot female friends (and only the hot ones, mind you) are owed to him because he’s “nice,” romantic, and intelligent. However, upon closer scrutiny he really isn’t a particularly nice guy (i.e. he bullied his sister Monica and benefits from enjoys her emotionally abusive parents’ favoritism), is self-centered, and consistently places his needs ahead of her own.
Examples:
The minute Rachel begins to find self-fulfillment in her career, Ross becomes jealous and hounds her at work, accuses her of “not having enough time for (him),” and generally tries to make her feel guilty for being successful and having priorities other than him.
How to avoid him:
Again, I cannot stress this enough: mutual respect. This is literally the foundation of all successful relationships, fictitious or otherwise.
Have your male characters support their significant other’s decisions and allow them to be happy for their success.
Your male character’s significant other is allowed to do things that don’t necessarily involve him. Make sure he understands that.
Intelligence in and of itself does not make a character a better person than his fellows, and intelligence does not have to equate the superiority with which Ross appears to associate himself.
Just look to the healthier couples Friends churned out in its time: Monica and Chandler, for example, love and respect one another’s goals, and are no the less interesting and hilarious because of it.
4. The Sheldon Cooper (i.e. the annoying autism stereotype)
How to spot him:
He’s a bloated paragon of autism stereotypes. He’s got zero regard for the feelings of his friends, considers himself superior to everyone, and is incapable of talking about anything but his own interests. As someone who’s on the spectrum myself, he’s basically my personal pet peeve.
Examples:
“His spot” on the sofa, his need to knock three times before speaking to the person on the other side of the door, etc. These are stereotypical and inaccurate portrayals of some autistic people’s comfort in routine.
How to avoid him:
Research symptoms of Asperger’s in adults (and for god’s sake, stay away from Autism Speaks.) Similarly, try and learn from actually people with Asperger’s, as anti-autism, “cure”-based sentiment tends to run high in allistic academia.
Study the mannerisms of famous people who may have been on the spectrum, such as Albert Einstein, Allan Turing, Leonardo da Vinci, and Sherlock Holmes’s inspiration, Joseph Bell.
If you’re not ready to depict an autistic character, I’m going to say wait. It’s okay to admit to ignorance, and it’s okay to wait to do more research before depicting a certain subgroup.
Try to avoid inserting autistic symptoms into characters to use as comedic fodder.
Asperger’s coded (and confirmed, by creators and cast) characters like Temperance “Bones” Brennan (Bones) and Spencer Reid (Criminal Minds) have their stereotypical moments, but they’re still successfully presented as lovable, intelligent, and productive characters; look to them to see better representation of intelligent, autistic characters in mainstream television.
5. The John Winchester (i.e. the abusive parent with a redemption arc)
How to spot him:
The John Winchester is a textually abusive or otherwise toxic parent who damages his children’s lives for his own purposes, inflicts emotional or physical harm, and is shown or mentioned to be violent, controlling, and/or neglectful. However, his redeeming/sympathetic qualities or otherwise heroic actions lead him to be narratively treated as a benevolent character and “good” parent.
Examples:
In Supernatural, John leaves his boys for weeks on end in motel rooms, sometimes over important holidays (and keep in mind that this was in the 80s and 90s, when child sexual abuse was at an all-time high.) He often places his eldest son as the soul caregiver of his other child, despite the fact that he was a child too at the time, and left them both alone with loaded firearms. He also uses unfairly harsh punishments, such as leaving his young son alone at a boy’s home for an entire summer because he stole food for himself and his brother. His son literally, unironically realized he was being possessed by a demonic entity when it said it was proud of him.
How to avoid him:
Educate yourself on the different definitions of abuse (emotional, verbal, physical, etc.) and what qualifies as each. Psychology Today is a great resource for this (they have some rudimentary definitions here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/child-abuse.)
Feel free to endow abusive parents with sympathetic qualities (in fact, please do; 100% evil characters tend to be campy, boring, and/or unintentionally hilarious) but be aware that no sympathetic qualities negate or justify child abuse.
Please, for the love of God, don’t use the “he was doing his best” excuse as a resolution. Many abusive parents legitimately are doing their best, and many abused children are acutely aware of this. It really doesn’t provide much comfort.
Remember that abused children frequently refuse to turn on their parents, often defending them long into their adulthood. The child’s forgiveness does not equate the parent’s redemption.
Similarly, I’d personally recommend staying away from the “I can finally forgive him” trope as well; it’s done to death, and often frustrating to real-life survivors.
Before the Meninsits™ come for me about this, I am going to be writing a list of female character archetypes as well, and then make lists of positive attributes to include in male and female characters, respectively, to provide a counterpoint. I might also make a part two of this post for all the other characters I hate, because I fear it would get too long.
In the meantime, there will be essays like this published at least once every other week, so be sure to follow my blog and stay tuned for future writing advice and observations!
Perfect post is post
2005 pride and prejudice: *darcy flexes his hand*
me:
tbh 99% of the time it’s useless to make a film adaptation of a video game. its not the same as making a book-to-film adaptation because at least you’re changing from a written medium to a visual one. but visual-to-visual just seems like you don’t want to respect video games’ interactive way of telling a narrative. like if you want to create a film with a unique story using that universe? fine. but whats the point of forcing a dynamic visual form into a stagnant visual form? you’re just always going to lose something significant in that translation while not really gaining anything in return
“Someone asked me before ‘What makes a costume iconic?’ It’s really only partly the costume designer. It’s really about Keira wearing it, at that moment, looking the way she does. The way that it’s framed. How Joe uses it. How it fits in the story. All those things make it something… It’s made to be at that moment in the movie, and its greatness comes from all those elements at the same time. I didn’t know it would be so good, you can’t know!” — Jacqueline Durran, costume designer for Atonement (2007).
me after finishing a movie: wow that was rly good!! im amazed
movie critics: trashiest movie ever created; possibly the worst movie of the year; complete disgrace
An adaptation of Hamlet that’s filmed like it’s an episode of like Keeping up with the Kardashians, and every soliloquy is just a character doing a talking head interview
This is actually so brilliant that when I do a filmed Hamlet adaptation I will do this, pay you for the creative direction, and give you the concept byline.
I’ll be real, this post was like 5% joke, 95% realization that the purest preservation of the soliloquy in modern culture is the reality show talking head, a confessional both private and performative and essential to understanding the emotional underpinnings of the actions being played, all in a format of direct address that we accept.
The reality show as the modern melodrama
everyone: this was badly written me, a simpleton: idk… i enjoyed it…
This is New Zealand’s national soap opera and an episode just ended with the greatest cliffhanger of all time
One of the most important things for any creator to learn: Finished, Not Perfect
psa: there is no way to justify whitewashing as not being racist. asian roles should be played by asian actors!!!
What did Batman v Superman teach you as a director and an actor?
In 20 years a hollywood movie called “Aleppo” will win 7 Oscars and everyone will say “Something like that should never be allowed to happen again”
The protagonist will be a white photojournalist.
How Surface Texture Affects Bloodstain Patterns
File under - Also useful
Also file under - I’m still a writer, not a murderer.
IF WOMEN WROTE MEN THE WAY MEN WRITE WOMEN
“Brett pulled his tank top up over his head and stared at himself in the full-length mirror. He pushed down his jeans, then his boxers, and imagined the moment when Jennifer saw him nude for the first time. His feet were average-sized, and there was hair on his toes that he should probably take care of before tonight. He liked his legs just fine, but his thighs were wide and embarrassingly muscular. He tried standing at an angle, a twist at his waist. Some improvement. In that position, it was easier to see his ass and notice that it was not as pert as it had been at 22. He clenched both cheeks, hoping that tightened its look. He sucked in his tummy and pulled his pecs up high, trying to present them like pastries in a bakery window. Would she like him? Were the goods good enough? He pouted his lips and ran his hands over his thighs, masking their expanse. Maybe.”
“There is a particular look about a teenage boy that lets you know what kind of man he’ll be. A certain fullness of lips, a frank sensuality in his gaze. We all know what the word for that is, but it’s not polite to use it until he’s proven he’s that kind of boy.”
“But I don’t get it!” Shea was panting, trying to catch up to Michael as he fled. “The monster ate everyone else. How did you escape?”
Michael reached the boat first, flinging himself in. He waited for Shea to follow him and take the oars, guiding them smoothly away from the shore.
“It’s because I was different from the other boys,” he said, pushing his hair behind his ear and looking away.
“What do you mean, different?” Shea’s muscles rippled and flexed as she rowed them to safety, and Michael could not tear his eyes away.
“Different. Pure, the monster said. Because I’m… I’ve never…” He looked away again, and the moonlight caught on his throat, outlined his clavicle.
“You’re a virgin,” Shea said, realization dawning. “What a waste.”
Michael blushed.
“If we get out of this alive,“ she said. “I’m going to fix that.”
Do go and read the others, they’re brilliant.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/if-women-wrote-men-the-way-men-write-women
