Japan’s vast assortment of mascots all share a similar problem.
Aliens have arrived on earth, and they look exactly like the things of many peoples nightmares. They’re taller, stronger, with sharp teeth and claws, and incredibly fast.
Luckily for earth, they seem to find humans absolutely adorable.
We have always been here.
Please add more if you have them <3
Milo Meets Kida: Translated! (aka milo fails at atlantean)
- Origin: Atlantean
“Who are you strangers and where did you come from?”
- Origin: Atlantean
(HALTINGLY & with a bad, very american accent)
“Who…are you strangers and….where did you come from?”
- Origin: Atlantean
“Your manner of speech is strange to me.”
- Origin: Atlantean
“I….travel…friend!”
- Origin: Atlantean
“…I travel friend…
(impatiently) …You are a friendly traveler?”
(does anyone else love how she’s correcting his shitty atlantean LOL bbies ♥)
- Origin: Latin (look at this frickin dweeb switching into latin)
“So, my friend, I am a traveler!”
- Origin: Latin
“You speak the language of the Romans!”
- Origin: French (milo plz)
“Do you speak French?”
- Origin: French
“Yes, sir!”
And for the record, Atlantean was written/created by Marc Okrand the dude who made Klingon.
So Kida and Milo are ACTUALLY talking to each other. Not just saying gibberish.
tinibopper
Milo: I know these other languages but I’m not fluent in yours yet please have mercy.
Kida: You seem to be an idiot but I’ll forgive you because you’re trying.
I know some people have mentioned that we don’t really talk about how JD is suicidal very much but… He is. In his own words “when the voice in your head says you’re better off dead don’t open a vein”
Something I believe he got from his mother (who I think we’re meant to infer that she killed herself) exacerbated by an extremely neglectful and aggressive father (who we see as a teen it seems like he tries to be more JD’s friend at best. And extremely distant and aloof at worst despite his sons troubles.)
While obviously this doesn’t excuse what he did, I think it provides some context. He’s severely depressed and also angry. Angry at his mother for leaving, angry at his father for being a terrible father (”learned to cook pasta and learned to pay rent” Seriously? The kids paying rent and he’s not even 18?? Dad can’t even make him some food every now and again?), angry at everyone around him who doesn’t really seem to get it or even try to understand it.
He obviously knows how to fight, like he did with Kurt&Ram. Which I think is a combination of fighting with kids at other schools before Westerburg and his dad enrolling him in some kind of after-school fighting class to try and give him an outlet (which doesn’t help much)
I think if Heather C’s death had been avoided and Veronica had got to know him long enough to realize how much he needed help he could have gotten better but. It just snowballed into an avalanche. ‘
Anyway! Enough about that, here’s the video that these pictures go to.
It is technically tied to the ghost AU
The Author Speaks: All My Original Writing Content
For your convenience, a masterpost of all (or most) of my original posts so far. It will obviously be updated as I create and add more!
Enjoy, and thank you for reading! <3
The Basics: Plotting, Descriptions, and More
Romance
Characterization
Reference Masterposts
Happy writing, everybody!
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.
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, be sure to follow my blog and stay tuned for future writing advice and observations!
Updating with the link to the female counterpart post, because people keep asking me for it. Read it here!
